The other way
by bhut
Summary: Stephen didn't die at the end of season 2, and now season 3 will be done in another way. Currently on a semi-permanent hiatus, may re-start at a later date.
1. Chapter 1

**The other way**

**Prologue: it all began with...**

_Disclaimer: all characters belong to Impossible Pictures._

...Stephen, Nick and Helen looked at each other with similarly jumbled gazes: on the other side of the decisively not closed doorway lurked over a dozen prehistoric and futuristic carnivores, including the infamous bat-like 'future predators', which were poised and ready to seize humanity by the throat in not just a metaphorical meaning.

"The door will have to be closed from the inside – one of us will have to do it," Nick Cutter said in a flat voice, before turning to Stephen. "Look," he told his unofficial second-in-command, "listen to Lester. He's a good man, and-"

"How about I do it instead?" Helen spoke.

Both Nick and Stephen turned around and saw... two Helen, who were looking at each other with an odd mixture of curiosity and... disgust? worry? something else? Nick didn't have time to speak before Stephen did:

"Helen – what is the meaning of this?"

"I," spoke the second Helen bearing odd pair of shades on her eyes, "am her chronological clone – or is she mine? It's not the point."

"Well, what's the point here?" Nick erupted. "Helen, stop stalling time."

"Time, Nick, I have plenty yet, for don't forget – there are _two_ of us," the second Helen continued to speak smugly, "but you have a point, for once in your life. Stephen," she turned and gave the younger man a look of extreme fondness or even tenderness, but Nick couldn't believe it at that time, "you and I will have to talk – _soon_," she turned around and gave the first Helen a pointed look, one that Nick himself had received many times during the second half of their married life, "won't I?"

First Helen looked guilty and embarrassed for a change. "Yes, well-"

"Yes, well, that wouldn't have worked spectacularly," the second Helen shook her head. "Not in the long run, not at all. Another plan will have to be figured out now – and honestly, some humility is good in the long run as well."

"I'll be aware of that," the first Helen nodded, "but now, I'm afraid, our mutual time is up."

"Yes, it is," the second Helen nodded and walked into the room, straight in the middle of the gathering beasts.

There was a chrome-coloured flash...

* * *

"James, we got to go back!" Jenny Lester frantically said to her immediate superior. "Nick and Stephen are taking too long-"

"It's Mr. Lester, thank you very much," the aforementioned superior said stiffly, "and I have you noted that we're still understaffed to storm Leek's former Reichstag, and-"

Nick and Stephen chose that moment to wobbly stumble out of the building, leaning upon one another. "Well," Lester immediately abandoned his quarrel with Jenny and turned to his head field agents, "what has happened to you two?"

"Helen happened, but she's gone – for now," Nick said, as he just sat down onto the street's pavement, ignoring everything else. "But she'll be back, I think."

"What about the animals? The future predators?"

"Instant fossilization, alongside with everything else in that room. How Helen had done it I don't know, but Connor – look up chronological clones, would you?"

"Chronological clones? That's sounds like something out of Doctor Who™," Connor spoke, clearly growing more excited. "I will have to see that room for myself."

"You do that," Nick said wearily, "I need to take a break."

"We all need to take a break," Jenny said firmly. "Don't we, Lester?"

"Temple here doesn't," Lester said, but without his usual conviction. "Oh, very well, rest now, investigate later. Oh, and Cutter – I don't care what you and Jenny Lewis here think, but we'll have to hire new head of security ASAP."

"Yes, Lester, whatever. Oh, and you'll have to decide whether you'll want to be an asshole or a decent guy, and start working from there, 'cause otherwise you just end up sounding confused and stupid."

Jenny gasped, James Lester gaped, and the younger adults could barely restrain their support for Nick's bravery.

"That's it, everybody got the rest of the week off," Lester said firmly. "Cutter, I'll see you and the rest of your crew on Monday."

"Sir yes sir!" Stephen responded enthusiastically. "Monday it is!"

This time the giggles weren't restrained.

But as the younger people laughed at Lester's attempt to save face, neither they nor anyone else thought to look up, at the building's roof, where Helen Cutter sat on it, looking down at them with the most intense and thoughtful look that she had ever wore on her face throughout her life...


	2. Chapter 2

**The other way**

**Chapter 1**

_Disclaimer: All characters belong to Impossible Pictures™._

_Several Weeks Later..._

Sarah Page was not a happy camper. For an archaeologist of her field experience and skill to be reduced to give the kiddies tours through the Museum's Egyptian exhibit was insulting. And yet...

And yet Sarah realized that she had been lucky – that incident with the Green Berets had been no joke, the ethnic people of the Middle East still looked with immense disapproval at the 'free-thinking women of the West' – and if that woman of the west happened to have some local roots as well, the situation could quickly escalate onto dangerous levels. Add to that mix the fact that archaeology often was intermixed with some grave-robbing, and things often got escalated to very unpleasant and dangerous levels, in which scenarios free and improved initiative wasn't always the best of things, true enough.

But still Sarah Page was fuming. This was not acceptable – well it actually was better than the other options, but now that she could see in hindsight – she may have been better off doing job in an office instead...

As Sarah Page mused over the peculiarities of her life and her various superiors, inferiors, and co-workers went on with their daily routines, in the back of the museum, in the warehouse area where various packed and unpacked artefacts and their containers were accumulating dust, something lit-up in a familiar (to the ARC members) chromatically-white light, and something ferocious and mottled, something sinuous and powerful slipped through, and announced its arrival with a throaty growl – but nobody heard it.

* * *

"So- so- so," Jenny muttered to herself as she desperately wished for a few cue cards to help her get through to this, "Nick Cutter, would you care to, to-"

"Hey, Jenny, what's up?"

"Stephen! Hi!" Jenny squealed as she frantically tried to hide her cue cards into her purse... before remembering that were imaginary, and thus didn't really exist. "So, uh, how's Nick?" she continued gamely, trying not to look like a loon. "How's he after his mother's visit?"

Now it was Stephen's time to wince. Agatha Cutter, the original Mrs. Cutter, had deigned to give her son a visit due to his birthday, and after meeting her, practically everybody at the ARC understood why Nick practically never ever went to his family's home back north and why Helen had decided to run away into the mists of the Palaeozoic past rather than stay with the Cutter family instead. That woman was more irritating than the late Leek and louder than a foghorn – and built like a heavy-duty plough-horse. After less than a day in Mrs. Cutter's company, it was almost a relief to have Helen pop in from wherever she taken to lurk, slam her divorce papers into Nick's arms, help Jenny blow up a particularly persistent and obnoxious giant orthocone, and... leave, after throwing several choice insults towards her former mother-in-law with great relish. While this didn't exactly improve the attitudes of the ARC's staff towards Helen, it, well, did help to confuse the issue of Helen further... and that was a mixed blessing if any...

Stephen shook his head, clearing it from any thoughts about Helen and turned his attention back to Jenny. "He's recovering," he said a tad wryly, "and by today's noon he should be as good as always. Why – you want to go to him and give him a big friendly hello?"

Jenny blushed. Stephen was far from oblivious, unlike, say, Connor, and could clearly enough see by now that whatever feelings Jenny felt for Nick were very, very more than just friendly, and as such, he couldn't resist from commenting about it, albeit in a rather mild way. But still, teasing was teasing, and Jenny, well-

"Hey, there you two are!" unexpectedly, Nick appeared on the scene, smelling mildly of coffee, but not looking any worse for wear than the usual. "What are you two talking about?"

"Well, Nick, uh-" Jenny began, trying to find a right way to convey her suggestion to go to her parents this weekend for tea, when something else happened: the time anomaly alarm rang.

"Jenny, let's go," Nick said as he and Stephen took off running down the corridor.

Jenny stifled a growl and felt an urge to hurt something instead.

* * *

The time anomaly alarm caught Abby eating breakfast. Although members of the ARC usually followed rather routine daily schedules, not unlike those of the ordinary British people, during the time of Leek Abby developed a habit of getting up early and taking a good long shower early in the morning. This was a natural cause of dreaming good long erotic dreams about Connor throughout the night and waking up drenched in sweat and other, nastier, body liquids – and as a result, Abby had to take up long morning showers – and equally long and early trips to the local laundry for her bed sheets.

Nowadays, of course, the main source of her frustration – Connor's relationship with Caroline – was over and gone, Connor told her himself – but things still weren't going on smoothly between the two of them. As a typical bachelor man, Connor's relationship with baths involving taking showers once a week, usually on weekend, and in case of an emergency, even that shower could be skipped in favour of the next week.

Abby, who by then had become something of a clean freak, didn't like such a cavalier attitude on Connor's part, and told him so. Connor...didn't back down and called Abby a girl (which she _was_), and told her that taking daily showers wasn't manly, and he was a man, and thus – no daily showers. Abby didn't like it, but she couldn't explain her obsession with daily showers – it would be just too humiliating and even sort of perverse – and besides, she liked taking them by now, so while she did back down from the shower issue, but... they still slept separately, even now, under one roof – and that didn't do any benefits to Abby's frustration and temper and-

The phone rang, startling Abby. As a result, she accidentally released the bowl with Rex's food onto Connor's head, and the flying coelurosauruvus immediately pounced onto it, startling Connor into waking.

"Abby, what gives-" Connor began, but Abby interrupted her potential boyfriend:

"It's a time anomaly – a new one."

* * *

"So, you're the new guy," Caroline Steele's voice was not exactly welcoming and more like wry and scornful. "Congratulations on the job – the gilt will wear off the lily faster than you can blink."

"Gee, first Lester and now you," Becker tried not to sound too intimidated, which, considering that Michael, Caroline's prize dog, and the scariest thing in England after the Loch Ness monster, was currently sitting next to her, giving Becker an evil eye, was not an easy thing. "What is this? Hazing the new guy?"

"I do not haze," Caroline rolled her eyes as she watched several dogs play around the ARC's Columbian mammoth, which abided the smaller animals' company without a blink, "I'm just telling you the truth. This is not a job for regular pay or shot nerves."

"Aha. And what do you do?"

"I train dogs – see?" with one hand Caroline indicated the dogs playing around the mammoth, and with the other she pulled out a business card and passed into to Michael, who obediently got up and trotted to Becker with the card on its mouth.

"Okay, that's a pretty good trick," Becker blinked, impressed. "So, have you been working here long?"

"A lot less than I've been breeding and raising dogs," Caroline replied in tone with which the Fool of King Lear used to talk to Kent when they have re-met each other at Goneril's court. "But that doesn't matter –"

The time anomaly alarm interrupted this discussion as well.

* * *

While the ARC field agents gathered their new troops and drove to the British Museum, Sarah Page was busy locking up her office, completely oblivious and unaware to the animal from the past that was stalking her from behind – until it growled.

Sarah Page whirled around and saw a big, blocky leopard with a pair of somewhat oversized canine teeth giving her a mean and hungry look, clearly indicating that it was very dangerous. Still, Sarah had encountered leopards in her long travels and field work and thus knew exactly what she had to do: she shrieked loudly, momentarily stunning the beast into paused its' deadly advance and then bolted back inside her office, locking it on the other side.

The big cat lunged immediately after her, its' forelegs striking the heavy door – but the leopard wasn't heavy enough to force the door to open inwards only by its own weight. Instead, there was suddenly a burst of barking, a growl, a yelp – and a thud. And then there was a knock on the door and a female voice spoke:

"Is there anyone in here?"

* * *

...The ARC crew had come inside the British Museum, and immediately Connor's portable time anomaly detector began to beep. "The anomaly must lie that way," he said, after briefly waving the smallish device in a semi-circle. "Let's go."

"Uh, problem," Caroline spoke up in a guilty tone, indicating with her free hand the behaviour of her dogs. "They smell something in the other direction, and they don't like it. Think something could have come through the anomaly already?"

Nick nodded. "Fair enough. Abby, you and Caroline go and investigate. If there is something big, call for back-up."

Abby glared hard at her ARC superior – what was he thinking? Unfortunately, Nick was already busy explaining something else to captain Becker, and thus didn't notice Abby's glare. As a result, Abby had to go with Caroline and the dogs, rather than with Connor. Needless to say, she wasn't happy, and had turned to Caroline to share the full extent of her unhappiness, when the dogs caught a full scent, and began to run, followed by Caroline (these were big dogs, and a single person couldn't control them all at once), and, by extension, Abby, who couldn't be left behind. Thus, their settlement of differences had to wait until the dogs had stopped... and they had stopped before one of the museum's offices, before which stood a large, leopard-like cat, intently clawing the office door – until it heard the dogs and whirled around with a threatening growl.

Abby, as it was already noted, was in a bad mood, and consequently, as soon as she saw the cat whirl around, ready to attack them at sight, she fired her tranquilizer gun, hitting the feline right between its' eyes and dropping it on the spot with a yowl.

Caroline blinked and turned to Abby. "Nice shot."

"Yeah, yeah," Abby said flatly as she stepped over the tranquilized cat and knocked on the office door. "Is there anyone inside?"

"Y-yes," the door unlocked with a click and an exotic-looking woman of approximately Jenny Lewis' age looked out from it. "Is the cat- oh." The 'oh' was caused by the side of Caroline tying up the aforementioned cat with some roping that she had brought along for just such an emergency.

Upon seeing Caroline wrapping-up the oversized leopard all business-like, and Abby ignoring the site as if it was nothing, Sarah could only blink and ask, weakly: "Just who you are, people?"

"Oh, we're just your typical government officials," Abby said nonchalantly, "just doing our job."

"What, this is just a job for you, people?" Sarah asked incredulously.

"Oh yeah," Abby agreed and jinxed it: from the site of the museum's warehouse came a thundering crash.

* * *

The time anomaly was right in the warehouse area of the British Museum, simple enough. But the more precise details were more complicated: the time anomaly per se was also stuck in an impromptu cage formed by a sculpting composition of several Egyptian deities...

...well, they were probably deities. None of the assembled had any concrete knowledge per se about Egyptian mythology save for the fact that in it any humans with animal heads were probably gods, and not heroes. Other than that, anything went.

"So, I think that the one of the front right corner is Thoth," Connor said conversationally to Stephen as they unpacked their equipment, while the one on his immediate left is Sobek."

"It is, is it?" Stephen shrugged. "And that's important, right?"

"I don't know, I am just postulating a theory."

"Connor, lately you've been tenser than when you dated Caroline. What gives – you haven't re-started going out with her, have you? 'Cause if you have, then Abby will probably castrate you-"

"Oh no, it's not that," Connor shook his head, "it's Abby herself. See, she's got this really girly idea about daily showers, and it drives me nuts – I mean, she acts so much like my mom in this instance, that it's a really a big downer for me," he sighed. "I love Abby, I really do, but if marrying her makes me become to turn into my dad – that's just wrong."

"What's wrong with your dad?"

"Well, where should I begin-" Connor began, but then actually stopped. "Say, why hasn't Nick stopped us yet? Usually he doesn't like this kind of idle chatter-"

"Oh, he's talking to Ms. Lewis," Becker said helpfully from his vantage point, "or rather, he's listening to her. She seems to be rather agitated about something."

"That she is," Stephen said thoughtfully, "she's been nervy since the morning. Think it was the visit of the 'original Mrs. Cutter' that got her in such a state?"

"Possibly," Connor agreed, "that woman was just plain scary – kind of like a dinosaur: tiny head, big body-"

"I saw something move in there!" shouted one of Becker's men. Immediately everyone - including Jenny, whose face was slowly acquiring an oddly red colour of skin – jumped to attention and stared into the twilit depths of the time anomaly.

"Now everybody, stay back – the creature will probably be small: this is a tight fit through the statue structure; but-" Nick didn't finish: Murphy's law had struck, and out of the time anomaly, breaking through the statuary as if it was a wooden lattice, came a giant, 4-meter-tall, elephant.

Well, actually, Captain Becker thought it was an elephant, despite the oddly misshapen mouth – the tusks were in the lower jaw, curving downwards, not sideways as they should – and the too-short trunk and ears, and the equally oddly misshapen head: no, it was definitely an elephant, twice as tall than a fully grown man (like Becker, for example).

Slowly, Becker began to shift his grip on the submachine gun, only to halt when he heard Connor Temple's half-strangled whisper of "Don't shoot" come from behind him – and meanwhile, the mutant elephant was whirling around its' strange head, its' beady eyes darting around as if it was paranoid and expecting an attack from any angle. And then... the warehouse's back door began to slide open.

The mutant elephant emitted a call – not a trumpeting one, as one would expect an elephant to emit, but rather a coughing growl, never mind that elephants can't, or shouldn't, growl – and then it charged.

And when an elephant charges, one must confess, then a freight train's damage can appear much less horrible at least superficially. In this case, one smashed warehouse sliding door, one upturned garbage truck...and two partially trampled garbage men made a particularly horrifying scene.

"What is going on here?" Abby's voice come from behind Jenny.

Everybody turned. And stared.

* * *

"Girls," Nick Cutter finally would in himself strength to speak civilly, "what is this?"

"That's Sarah Page. She works at the museum, and was attacked by this sabre-tooth leopard down here."

"Sabre-tooth leopard? You mean the dinofelis at your feet?" Nick was not being mollified. "Girls, what were you thinking, carrying this animal around as a pair of great white hunters or something?"

"What's happened here?" Sarah Page has finally found her voice, and it was deafening. "A tornado? An avalanche? A robbery in progress? A hippo stampede, maybe?" she sounded damn near hysterical.

"Ma'am, it was an ugly mutant elephant," Captain Becker said courageously as the others just stared at her as if she was turning into such a beast before their eyes instead.

"A deinothere, actually," Connor explained helpfully from behind the military man.

"A deino-what? I thought you said that it was dinofelis?" Sarah glared at the young man.

"No, no, a dinofelis is the cat that you see down here. A deinothere is more like an ancient relative of the elephant," Connor explained, trying to be helpful.

"If it's ancient, then it is extinct. If it is extinct, how was able to do such damage?" Sarah wasn't lightening-up on her questioning.

"It came through our time through there," Connor sighed, half-turning to point to the time anomaly, and stiffened. "Nick, this is bad."

Naturally, Nick and the others looked at that direction, and decided that they didn't like what they saw either: the time anomaly seemed to be shrinking and flickering – in other words, implied that it was dying down.

"Right then," Jenny said briskly, "Abby, Caroline, untie your catch and throw it back in, less it also gets stuck here along with the elephant."

"Right," Abby nodded, then she looked at the dinofelis which seemed to be waking up from its tranquilized sleep, and frowned. "Stephen, Connor – I think we need help it, it appears to be waking up..."

The dinofelis had indeed wakened up and it yowled loud enough to echo all around the warehouse, startling the others. And then – it promptly fainted and went smack.

People around the warehouse just exchanged looks. "All we did was tranquilize it and then tie it up to bring it back here," Caroline said weakly. "We didn't do anything else."

"Other than carry it upside down through the whole museum!" Nick protested hotly.

"Well, how else were we supposed to bring it here? On a little red wagon after you were finished carrying around the mutant elephant?" Caroline glared back.

"And who's going to pay for the damages?" Sarah wasn't backing down either.

"Girls, good point, Jenny – I think you better handle... Sarah Pager, right?"

"It's Page," Sarah growled, "and who's Jenny?"

"That would be me," Jenny shot back, feeling like growling herself, "and we happen to be working for her majesty's government."

"Well, so am I," Sarah continued to glare, "just in a different way, apparently. So what's your point?"

"Hmm," Jenny felt a decisively evil thought enter her mind. It wasn't exactly like her at all, but she was in love, and she felt frustrated, and that does not make good conditions for rational thought.

And so instead what Jenny said was: "Look, let me just get back to the ARC and we will sort it all out, oh yes."

There was a pause, as everybody just stared at the PR member of their team as if she had spawned a second head. "Jenny," Nick said in a rather softer voice than the one that he usually used. "Are you okay?"

Jenny frowned in thought. "No?" she admitted weakly. "Not as well as I should be... I think."

* * *

There was another pause as everybody just looked at each other in concern. "This is worse than the flood with the sea scorpions," Connor said finally. "At least back then we had some plan of action as to what to do."

"And so we do now," Nick shook his head. "All we need is to bring the deinothere back here, send the dinofelis back there as well, and have Jenny have some rest."

"And how are we going to do that? The darn elephant is probably halfway down to the Trafalgar Square by now!" Caroline, apparently, didn't feel like backing down. "What are we going to do? Have our elephant have a showdown with it at sunset?"

"It's a mammoth!" Abby snapped, "and, um, if a deinothere is kind of like the modern elephants, it could, maybe, work."

Now everyone stared at her as if _she_ had sprouted that second head. "Abby," Connor found his voice first, "what do you suggest we do? Hold a prehistoric animal face-off in the London streets?!"

"No, no," Abby said quickly, "animals... modern elephants... they fight only when they cannot intimidate each other. The size, the ears, trunk, tusks – the bigger they are the more powerful and intimidating the bull elephant is to the other bulls..."

"And the Columbian mammoth is taller than a deinothere – I think," Connor added, thoughtfully. "Certainly where it counts. You think that the deinothere may be scared into running back here?"

"Yes," Abby nodded, tensely, but with some hope now. "Yes, I do."

"And how will we be able to lead it here without running amok over the whole city?" captain Becker asked flatly.

"Because it will be a team effort – like a fox hunt, say," Caroline said thoughtfully. "Abby will be doing most of the chasing, with the rest of us co-ordinating their direction."

"Say what?"

"We will record the mammoth's cry and play it whenever the – other guy will try to stray from the path. We can use GPS, or some kind of a computer program, to plan our route from wherever to here and keep to the track. And Ms. Lewis... she can probably put some sort of a PR spin on the whole spin-"

The dinofelis struck. It rose up sharply, bursting through its bond, claws ready to rake... and Michael, the star of Caroline's breeding program, the great big Brazilian mastiff slammed into the dinofelis, causing it to skid backwards on the floor. The prehistoric feline yowled, the well-trained dog prepared to bite...

...and several small, mottled kittens with a distinct "overbite" jumped out of the time anomaly with some pitiful yowls of their own.

* * *

"Michael!" Caroline broke the silence before it could condensate. "Heel! Sit! Stay!" And the big dog obeyed, glaring with murder at the dinofelis, as it slinked backwards and its' kittens ran up to it, nuzzling.

"Nick," Jenny indicated that she was almostat the end of her tether. "What is going on?"

"The deinotheres have died out 2 million years ago, the dinofelis – 600 thousand years later," Nick said slowly. "This dinofelis and its' kittens are starving, therefore it's probably still 2 million years in the past on the other side of the time anomaly-" Nick's voice trailed off. The time anomaly had shrunk by more than a half, and had dimmed proportionally as well. "Becker. Leave several of your men here and prevent anything else from coming through, no matter how small or big or poisonous it is – got it? Stephen – you and others restrain the dinofelis and bring it to the ARC, since we're going to it anyways. Anymore questions?"

"No," Stephen nodded curtly and looked at Caroline. "Can your dog help?"

A slight, sardonically acidic smile touched Caroline's lips and vanished before it could form, as she pointed at the dinofelis. "Michael! Restrain!"

The mastiff lunged, pinning the prehistoric cat to the floor with its' weight and jaws. Caroline was just moments behind it, grabbing the cat's front legs. Abby, who was always keeping an eye on Caroline, followed suit, and pushed her away from that position, grabbing the cat's front legs herself, so Caroline grabbed the hind legs instead.

And then they looked at Stephen and others. "A little help here?" Abby said. "She's too heavy to be carried just by us without the tranquilizers, and too sick to be tranquilized."

"Right," Stephen agreed, a bit sheepishly.

"Can I help?" Connor echoed.

"No – you design the tracking route or whatever," Nick said firmly.

Connor glared.

"Is it always like this?" Sarah asked Jenny in a somewhat shaking voice.

"No," Jenny shook her head, as she remembered their captivity by Leek. "No, sometimes it gets much worse."

* * *

James Lester was in a foul mood. James Lester was in a fell mood. James Lester could barely restrain himself from uttering some of the filthiest curses that he knew when the ARC field agents came back to the ARC...with a wild prehistoric elephant or something rampaging along the shores of the Medway, flinging around cars and trucks like straws and feathers.

"Cutter, what the Hell do you think you're doing!" he shouted, or rather, began to shout, filled with rational anger. "That bloody elephant is destroying everything-"

"Here," Nick said flatly, as he thrust the wrapped-up dinofelis and its kittens into the hands on Lester and his aides. "Take them to the ARC's vets – now."

"And tell them that if they don't do their best to stabilize the cat's condition, I will feed their ears to Caroline's prize dog," Abby added grimly as she got from the other side of the car and firmly walked towards the mammoth's pen. "Now if you excuse us, I and the mammoth got a date with destiny."

* * *

For few simultaneously long and short moments everybody froze, when Abby climbed onto the mammoth neck, and kicked him slightly in the nape. "Let's go, Manny," she commanded loudly, as every human member (including Nick Cutter) froze in instinctive, unwilling anticipation in order to know what would happen next?

Next was the mammoth. It took one, then another step, and then began to firmly trot forwards, apparently quite responsive to Abby spoken and unspoken commands. As Lester and others gaped, Nick Cutter, the palaeontology professor turned government worker, waited for the mammoth to pass him by, and then climbed back into the automobile, and followed the mammoth... at a very slow speed.

Curious despite his best intentions (that's what he told himself at any rate), James Lester followed the strange procession outside, only to see more of the ARC vehicles take the mammoth under an 'honourable convoy' and led it onwards.

"What are they doing?" Lester whispered weakly, as the mammoth and the automobiles vanished in the distance. "What are they thinking? That this is some sort of a Jurassic Fight Club? Lorraine, screen the calls. If that harpy Johnson calls, don't let me talk to her and vice versa. The rest of you – take the damn cats to the vets, got it? Or else Maitland will send the mammoth after us as well."

"And where will you be, sir?"

"Trying to contact Jenny Lewis, of course. Hopefully, she'll still be able to think and explain rationally."

* * *

"Just this morning," Sarah Page was explaining to Becker, "I was complaining to myself that life as a museum worker – even as a worker at the British Museum – is just too static and suffocating for my tastes, I need to be out in the field. Now I can see that my usual field work was the very pinnacle of rationality as compared to this – this-"

"Madness?" Becker suggested helpfully.

"No – this is folly, foolishness, stupidity – but a stupidity that's been somehow rationalized. It's not madness," Sarah said thoughtfully. "And, just between you and me, how long has this team has been working together?"

"I don't know," Becker admitted. "I was only recently assigned to it myself. Why do you ask?"

"Because these people know each other very well. That pair – Abby and Caroline – they really don't like each other, yet they co-operate because the man in charge told them to. You don't get that sort of co-operation in a new team – only in a seasoned one."

"Mmm, maybe," Becker agreed, especially because he had suspected something like that all along. An established field team – and he and his boys as accessories, if not something worse. Life wasn't fair indeed.

"Captain," Jenny Lewis got into the car as well, "start up your engine – we're good to go."

"What do you mean-" Sarah began and fell silent: she saw the mammoth.

It was stupendous in size, easily 4 meters tall in the shoulders, and it weighted several tons, as the street echoed with its tread. The car of Sarah, Becker and Jenny Lewis looked like a toy vehicle next to the Ice Age beast.

And yet it was controlled by diminutive, boyish blonde that was yelling something encouraging into the beast's ears as it went forth – flanked at the sides and the back by the ARC's vehicles, several of which had large speakers attached to the backs. "I thought," Becker muttered to himself, "that this was going to be an easy job-"

"Captain, move it!" Jenny's voice brooked no argument, and Becker started his car.

* * *

Stephen just looked at his car companions. Connor looked like a nervous wreck, while Caroline's lips were pressed so tightly together that they appeared almost non-existent. You could cut the tension with a knife.

"So," Connor suddenly began to speak especially brightly, "I see that you and Abby are getting along, yes?"

"Stephen," Caroline's voice was barely more than a whisper. "Gag your friend _now_. Because if he gets me going, I won't be able to drive, I think. That is a- a-, I don't know what it is exactly, but it's like the bloody Ganesh from my other mother's collection, and it is freaking me out."

"What's a-" Connor began before Stephen shut him up physically, but Caroline heard him anyways:

"Ganesh, Connor, is an elephantine god. Abby is driving a megabeast, and if everything goes wrong – we'll get scalped metaphorically, but she'll..." Caroline bit off the rest of the sentence and started the car. "We're moving."

* * *

For his part, Nick Cutter had a certain confidence that the mammoth will not wander off the track without a good reason – as he knew (and had talked about it with Connor, who was writing his thesis paper on the Ice Age megafauna), the extinct American elephant kin, mammoths and mastodons, used to travel long distances for food and water – and the ARC's mammoth, forced to live a mostly sedentary life in the Center, was especially eager to travel and show-off his endurance and strength.

Well, the demonstration of endurance came first. Without breaking stride, the mammoth covered the distance from the London's suburb to the Medway's shores in little bit more than two hours, looking just as calm and collected as when it had left the ARC building. Admittedly, 'calm and collected' may not be exactly the right term to describe an animal...but this was no ordinary animal, no more so than Rex, Abby and Connor's flying pet.

And then the deinothere finally made its appearance – and the mammoth froze. Both extinct animals were relatives of the elephants, both had short tails and practically hairless hides; both had pillar-like legs and eyes that were somewhat small for their relative sizes... but that was where the similarities ended.

The mammoth really was an elephant, built on an extra-large scale: the tusks and trunk, the ears and the peculiar boney dome at the front of the skull – it was quite elephantine, and a person ignorant in biology, or palaeontology, could confuse the two cousins easily enough.

But the deinothere was completely different story. It was as big and heavy as the mammoth, but its sloping, flat head, its' smallish ears, its abridged trunk and especially its 'misplaced' tusks, located in the lower, not the upper, jaw, curving directly downwards, not forwards, in a curve, all told a different tale – this was no 'true' elephant, but an evolutionary side branch, an evolutionary experiment that died out thousands of years before the true elephants, the mammoths and mastodons, walked the face of America.

And now one of their kind met the deinothere face to face – and didn't like it. The mammoth trumpeted in a volume that Nick had never heard (not that he had ever had change to hear trumpeting elephants any time before now) and began to advance. The deinothere looked at it and yowled its' own challenge, but the mammoth wasn't deterred. It advanced, ears spread wide, the trunk twitching like a rope of solid muscle, and the deinothere's nerve broke:

It turned around the fled, pursued by the mammoth.

* * *

Abby Maitland has never been so terrified in her life. Well, to be more correct, so terrified and exhilarated at the same time her life. She was riding a mammoth!

She was riding a beast that had died thousands of years before she was born, and, and, she was staying on it. She was holding on, she was surviving, and they were winning, as the deinothere fled.

It fled and tried to vanish in the maze of the city streets, but the cars with the recorded cry of the mammoth cut him off time and again, and the deinothere had instinctively learned, had realized that the mammoth was bigger, was stronger, had further the reach, and it backed down, and it backed down, and backed down, and returned to the correct path – back to the British Museum, back to the time anomaly.

* * *

Stephen could never remember another such day since his 'tenure' at the ARC. Oh certainly, there had been worse times – like when Leek had captured them, or even when he, and Nick, and a young girl named Taylor were stranded in the Silurian time period – but this, certainly, was close enough. The mammoth, despite all of Abby's assurances, clearly was itching for a fight, it was clearly eager to kick the deinothere's arse not just metaphorically, but literally, and its' tread made the pavement shake.

Of course, so did the deinothere's, but by now it was further away from the cars and the mammoth, but the mammoth was gaining on it, and Stephen wasn't sure that Abby would be able to control the mammoth once it caught up to the other animal, and then-

The mammoth stopped. It stopped so suddenly that Abby was barely able to hold onto it, grabbing it by its' ears – but the deinothere didn't stop. It rushed into the hole in the Museum's wall from which it had escaped onto the Medway shores – and the whole thing went up in a whirlwind of light and lightning.

Yet it was a differently coloured light – not the usual chromatic white colour of a time anomaly, but a dustier, more golden-hued light. Some sort of energy discharges thundered through it – and again, it was something different from what they were used to.

And then... it was over. The wall of the British Museum with its destroyed garage door has been... repaired, and there was no trace at all that a deinothere had ever thundered through it and back.

A single post-it paper note fluttered in the post-storm (time storm?) breeze and landed on the hood of Caroline's car.

"That," Connor exhaled simultaneously with the paper note landing down, "was something new, right, guys?"

"Connor," you could hear... something in Caroline's voice. "Go and help Abby get down or something. Stephen – go and take a look at that post-it note."

There was something else, besides some kind of a spiritual weariness that caused both young men to comply with Caroline's requests without making a fuss.

* * *

Abby Maitland, Jenny Lewis could see, was more exhilarated than terrified, and currently was more active than a hummingbird that she had once seen on the BBC.

"I rode a mammoth, I rode a mammoth," she was repeating over and over, as she jumped literally rings around Nick, the army men and Connor, who were currently trying to restrain the mammoth, who had more or less calmed down now that the deinothere was gone. "I rode a mammoth, I rode a mammoth – Stephen, what's wrong?"

Stephen's face was indeed concerned and humourless – and he made a beeline straight to Nick. "Listen to this: _Stephen – tell Nick next time not to dawdle for so long. My patience may be nearly infinite, but many time anomalies have a much shorter duration than that. Helen. PS: Keep an eye on the Egyptologist for the next little while – I believe she's going to develop some issues right about now-_"

The post-it note vanished. One moment Stephen held it in his hands and read from it to Nick, and the next moment – it was gone, without a trace. Simultaneously with that, Sarah Page grasped her head and winced for a pain spike.

"Are you alright?" Becker, being the closest one to the Egyptologist, asked quietly.

"No! In one half of my head I remember today, in the other half – I do not!" Sarah wailed. "What's going on?"

"Helen," Nick muttered like a curse. "She's up to her tricks."

"Yes, and they are quite new, apparently," Stephen agreed – somewhat – with his boss. "She never did something like this before."

"Something like what?" Nick was clearly revving up for an argument, but Caroline spoke up before Stephen did:

"Apparently restored everything that that prancing elephant had smashed. See?" she pressed the button on the garage door and it went up, revealing the museum's warehouse... as it was before. "No traces of the elephant...or the time anomaly...or anything else."

"Exactly!" Sarah echoed the younger woman's sentiments, still holding onto her forehead. "It's like this incident has never taken place!" Her voice was almost a wail. "But it did! I remember it!"

"So do the rest of us. Connor, get your detector out now-" Nick turned to the younger man, who gave him back a regretful look.

"Nick, if there's no active time anomaly to detect, it won't detect anything," Connor pointed out, clearly not happy about this realization. "It's just not the right tool for this job." He paused. "And yes, I _know_ – we don't have any other tools... yet."

"We might as well leave now – before Connor invents something new there's nothing that we'll be able to find," Stephen added, sounding just as unhappy. "Right, Nick?"

"Fine," Nick submitted with a grunt. "Apparently, you're right. Abby, Connor, Becker – has the mammoth gotten into its' truck?"

"Yeah," Abby nodded, no longer as hyper-happy as before – Helen's demonstration of her new (or not so new?) skills had calmed her down as well. "We're ready – let's go back to the ARC."

"Well, Ms. Page," Jenny turned to the Egyptologist, "it seems that all has worked out in the long run, yes?"

Sarah opened her mouth to say that she had half of today's memories replaced or erased and that was not what she considered to be 'worked out', when the cell phone rang.

"Ms. Lewis!" Lester's voice was tenser and brisker than the usual. "What's going on down there? We were watching the breaking news of the Jurassic face-off that you have orchestrated, when suddenly – just when the other elephant entered the museum – every TV transmission went static and there's no response from you. None of you are dead, are you?"

"And when was that? Chronologically speaking?" Connor spoke-up before Jenny could.

"Well, that's another funny thing – my watch somehow got broken, and so has everyone else's who's been watching your show. What has happened?"

"Does anyone here have a working watch or something?" Nick turned away from Jenny and Connor talking to Lester and turned to the others. "Come on, check them now."

Perhaps not too unexpectedly, nobody did. Every clock, whether a wristwatch or the car clock, has broken down...leaving the rest of the machinery working normally.

"That's it, let's leave here – for now," Nick said firmly. "Connor, you better alter your detector something fast, before it becomes obsolete."

"Will do," Connor nodded more seriously than ever before.

"Ms. Page," Jenny turned to Sarah, "I believe that you will have to come with us as well – there are certain questions for which we will need your corroboration as a witness."

For once in the duration of this day, Sarah just nodded and climbed back into the car, followed by Becker and Jenny.

* * *

Helen was wordlessly observing the retreating ARC team through a pair of field binoculars, bought several years ago before today. And she was smiling. It was an odd little smile, almost a smirk, but not quite.

"Nick Cutter," she whispered quietly. "I once was going to make you into a pebble, but now I know and saw that that will not work. So, now I will make you back into a man, and if that doesn't work – I will always rewind and do something else."

With these words Helen turned around and walked into a time anomaly that closed behind her back.

_End Chapter 1_


	3. Chapter 3

**The other way...**

**Chapter 2**

_Disclaimer: All characters belong to Impossible Pictures, unless I put them in._

The place was Australia, 65 thousand years ago. The sun was shining, the sky was bluer than the sea just a few feet away from the coast, and Helen Cutter was having one of the worse discussions that she ever had in her lifetime.

"So, you're probably wondering why I have asked to talk to you," the time-travelling anthropologist's interlocutrix spoke, while revealing some very sharp and pointy (like a fish trap) teeth. "After all, we haven't spoken for so long."

"Frankly, I thought that after that incident in Cretaceous Argentina, you weren't all that eager to talk to me from the start."

"Ah, but then you went back in time and undid that," – another piscine smile – "you traded that off for what? Love?"

Helen shrugged. "Apparently."

"Mmm, and you have acquired such stellar achievements in this line. Helen – by that time that your run-in with Iymrith in Argentina was through, you have acquired a _respectful_ amount of power, you were well on your way – more so than she-"

"Melinoe. It just wasn't the same. I was physically rotting and mentally unravelling, and honestly, I didn't want that path in the beginning, and I didn't want it in the end – so, I died, took a breather, and decided to go the other way."

"Which brings us neatly here, to this junction in time, when I can destroy you in one go. Well, maybe two, if you got lucky first. However, I did enjoy our little intelligent chats those few times that we had them, and frankly, I like you a lot more than Iymrith, and-" she paused.

"And what?"

"And it's time for you and Iymrith to go to war."

"Say what?!"

"War."

* * *

"Good morning everybody – sorry that I was late – what are you doing?"

"Inputting the data from the museum," Connor replied cheerfully "so please don't touch anything, would you?"

"What data? I thought that the time anomaly detector didn't work and you haven't invented anything else in that line of work."

"And I haven't – but I will," Connor said defensively. "Anyways, this is something different – Nick and Stephen got in touch with their old university colleagues and rented some dating equipment to work in the museum instead."

"Some what?"

"Equipment that's been used to date radiocarbon and the like in the field palaeontology and archaeology work," Connor elaborated. "That kind of dating."

"O-oh! Right," Jenny looked a bit sheepish for a moment. "So, uh, did it work?"

"Actually, yes. As a matter of fact it did."

"And?" Jenny prodded, as Connor somewhat refused to elaborate.

"And, uh, the affected area in the museum got checked-out and there were some traces of the late Pliocene environment and those facts got recorded and now I am wrapping-it up for Lester all scientifically-like so that Lester could give them to his bosses all nice and professional-like," Connor finished with a grimace.

"What's wrong?"

"Well, just between the two of us – and Nick and Stephen, who're obviously already aware of it – this whole thing is far less of a breakthrough that Lester wants it to be, and far more of a typical scientific paper that gets published in a scientific journal that gets distributed to a restrictive circle of selectively-minded people."

"That bad, hah?"

"Oh, make no mistake – before the time anomalies have changed our lives, I myself was beginning to write and subscribe to such journals, and Nick – well, Nick _is_ a professor, he deals with it on a much greater scope than me. Anyways, the point is that if you're a part of that circle then such articles are greatly interesting, but if you're not, well..." Connor looked away.

"That bad, hah?" Jenny repeated her question, this time in form a statement."

"Yeah, and since Lester has supposedly been making noises about our financial issues, well..."

"What? Oh no, no-no-no, we're not going to get downsized," Jenny said quickly, before her brain caught up with her mouth – and Connor just stared at her statement in horror. "Connor, please keep quiet about this – yet. It's just a rumour-"

"Fine, fine, but even if it is just a rumour, neither I nor Stephen nor Nick, are certain that this is the right way to go if we want to improve the ARC's standing in the government – not that we care, of course."

"Yes, certainly," Jenny nodded in reply. "Anyways, have you seen Lester? I need to talk to him as well."

"Now that you mentioned it - no."

* * *

"Miss Maitland, please explain to your co-worker that it's important that she houses the dinofelis and its' kittens at her place-"

"Miss Maitland, can you please tell our boss that he's a colossal ignoramus who contradicts himself whenever he wants to-"

"Whoa, whoa, not at the same time!" Abby Maitland quickly interrupted the intruders on her scene (she was currently visiting her mammoth with some apples and fresh greens). "And besides, Caroline, since when I am Miss Maitland? Aren't I the Lizard Girl or something?"

"No – not anymore."

"Oh, well, anyways, Miss Maitland I am not-" Abby paused as a rather bemused and ironic look came onto Caroline's face. "-that is to say, I don't feel like a Miss Maitland. Can't you just call me Abby as everyone else does?"

"I don't," Lester said pointedly, "and anyways-"

"You don't count, so it's okay," Abby shot back, "and besides, as Nick pointed out, you got personality issues."

"You want me to cut your pay?"

"Hey, Mr. Lester, I finished the report," Connor and Jenny chose this moment to appear on the scene. "What's going on here?"

"Oh nothing. Your ex-girlfriend is obstinate, and your current girlfriend is a bit star-struck," Lester said flatly. "Nothing that you can't handle, I'm sure."

Connor turned red. "Really, this is about the sabre-tooth leopards," Caroline said flatly. "The Man here wants me to house them, never mind that it violates your own statute of secrecy or whatever."

"She has a point," Jenny nodded, "regretfully, she does. Anyways, Nick and Stephen are apparently sleeping it off at the ARC's rest area, and Becker has reported for duty as well. Now what?"

Lester opened his mouth for a response of some sort, when the sounds of the time anomaly alarm sounded throughout the Center.

* * *

Nick Cutter awoke in a vile mood. The whole museum-related debacle has left a bad taste in his mouth – and in part, at least, it was about the whole radiocarbon dating. It wasn't that it was hard – it was actually quite easy once he and Stephen had roped Becker and his men in assisting them as opposed to just standing there looking important, even if supposedly going for protective instead. No, that wasn't it – it was the connotations of the whole thing that gave Nick Cutter that vile mood.

Throughout his life, Nick somehow assumed that he was actually happy to live a rather routine way of life. As a result of this assumption, his wife decided to leave him in favour of living with some prehistoric cavemen instead, his professional life was stuck in a rut, and he himself discovered that he was much satisfied with life when all those chaotic and semi-unpredictable time anomalies entered it instead – and now that neat and orderly past had come back – and he wasn't happy about it.

And neither were Connor and Stephen – both younger men wore similarly distasted looks on their faces once they realized that attempts at radiocarbon dating were better than nothing if they were to attempt to study something from the appearance and the disappearance of the time anomaly in the British Museum's warehouse. Admittedly, once they put Becker and his men into the act, their mood had brightened somewhat, but when they were told that they were going to write-up a scientific paper about it afterwards, those sour looks came back.

And it wasn't like the radiocarbon dating was in vain. In fact, it produced a picture – of a cone-shaped funnel, for a lack of a better term, which seemed to have been active in the warehouse area, with the narrow point being positioned in the middle of the Egyptian statuary, in which the initial time anomaly – the one that brought forth the deinothere and the dinofelis family – has been located. Moreover, it had confirmed Nick's theory about the time anomaly leading into 2 million years ago, and this was a good thing as well.

Yet... to his surprise, Nick also realized that such discoveries were no longer as satisfying as he once thought that they would be. Yes, the time anomaly had opened into two-million-years-ago past, yes, it has evolved into a funnel-like shape, but – why had it evolved into this shape and how did Helen do it?

Helen's involvement, of course, opened a whole other can of worms, centred mostly on Stephen and on those divorce papers that she literally slammed into him at his post-birthday part time anomaly emergency. It was a nice piece of legislative paperwork, nicely and neatly tied up all the way down to the issue of alimony...

The remembrance of _that_ issue made Nick get up in a huff and go out to take some iced tea or similar beverage for a drink. Initially, he drank coffee, but hanging around Stephen and Connor and Abby made him feel a bit too old before his time, and as such-

The time anomaly alarm cut-off Nick's musings and got Stephen to jump up from his bunk.

"Let's go," Nick said wryly, "and get Becker along the way, I suppose."

* * *

"Connor!"

"Nick! Wha-! Where-"

"Had to find Becker in his sulk – he's still a bit peeved that he actually had to work last night," Nick said flatly, as he looked at the detector's maps. "So, what are we dealing with now?"

"A time anomaly in one of the suburbs," Connor replied matter-of-factly, "less business, more private housing, as opposed to our usual haunts."

"Connor – we don't have 'usual haunts', and what's with the look on your face?"

"There's something different about this time anomaly – the alarm is sounding somehow different about this one. Maybe I should monitor it from here."

"I don't know about this, mate," Stephen spoke up before Nick did. "As Helen's yesterday little power show had demonstrated, long distance monitoring of time anomalies isn't very reliable, especially if Helen's going to be stretching her muscles again."

"What do you mean?"

"Some of the smaller TV stations, as well as some private satellite dishes are still down for the count. This may not be exactly a city-wide blackout, but who's to say that she couldn't do it to the computers as well?"

"Good point," Connor said unhappily, "and speaking of her, it's good that that Sarah Page had finally recovered, right?"

Becker made some sort of a non-specific sound in his throat, causing knowing grins appear on the faces of Stephen and Connor – and then the computer announced that an e-mail had arrived.

"Now what?" Nick muttered, as he paused from leaving Connor's quarters onto the ARC's garage. "This isn't from one of your Chat buddies, is it?"

"No-o, this is Yeats' Second Coming – _Turning and turning in a widening gyre, the falcon cannot hear the falconer; things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; mere anarchy is loosed upon the world_..."

"What? Is it a joke?"

"No, there's a PS that says: _Young man, tell Nick that is not a joke – this will be the hardest fight ever since Leek's yahoos. You got to win, or else the whole world is screwed – and yes, I am included in the screwage. Sorry about this. Helen._"

Upon hearing this, everyone else in this room looked at Nick. The older man's face clearly showed his mental processes – and it wasn't pretty. Still, with his position as the field leader, no one else present tried to snap him out of it – and then he snapped out of himself.

"Helen," he exhaled heavily, "is a lot of things, but that is so not her style, so if it is a trap, then it isn't hers. Therefore, captain, just to err on the side of caution, tell your man to pack more than tranquilizers, all right? And then we'll go out there and see what Helen has cooked-up this time."

* * *

To say that Jenny and Abby were surprised, when they saw Becker and his men armed somewhat more heavily than the usual, would be right on the mark. Still, they accepted it easily enough when it was explained that Helen seemed to be up to some sort of new tricks and therefore some extra precaution was right on the money – it was still pretty certain by now that Helen was rather foe than friend, and thus some extra precautions were always useful.

(Caroline Steele, incidentally, never asked anything – she just gave Becker a look that caused the army man to wince slightly, and started her car.)

And thus, it was a rather tense group that drove to the time anomaly site and a rather quiet one – more so than usually, when Connor, at least, often tried to banter with others, even if they didn't want to; but now, even Connor was keeping quiet.

And then they drove around a corner, and saw Helen sitting behind an impromptu picnic table next to a compact-looking BBQ grill with a couple of other women who were arguing with a man.

Upon seeing this scene, Caroline carefully stopped the car and looked at Stephen and others. "Do you know any of them, besides Helen herself?"

"As a matter of fact – no, but for some reason I don't like them," Stephen muttered.

* * *

Detective-constable Danny Quinn was, by nature, an easily irritable man, and it currently showed.

"Just what do you think you ladies are doing?" he snarled, as he did his best to keep his temper in check. "This is a crime scene – not a BBQ area!"

"No," one of the women – the shorter one in the more sensible clothing spoke up in an oddly emotionless tone of voice. "The crime scene lies over there – this is a public area – we're not trespassing on anything. _Leave._"

"Don't take that tone with me," Danny's self-control slipped another notch. "I am-"

"-an officer of the law, we're sure," the speaker interrupted, still in that flat tone of voice. "Nonetheless, unless you bring the proper paperwork for interrupting with the officials of her government, you're the one trespassing. _Leave._"

That was about it – Danny shifted his position, preparing to book at least this one and maybe one of the others as well before they had time to call their lawyer or something. Unexpectedly, the woman spoke up again.

"Or, if you're not convinced by me, call this number, and you'll get your explanation or confirmation or whatever – honestly."

Danny's eyes narrowed in suspicion but he had to check if the number was real, on an off chance. And if it wasn't – even better!

He dialled the number.

* * *

The cell phone's number startled everyone in the car, but Caroline still had presence of mind to pick it up and answer.

"Caroline Steele speaking- who is it?"

"No, that's my mother's name."

"Danny Quinn – ye-es, I remember you from the dog competition."

"Yes, I am currently working for the government – part-time, mind you. Call this number – it's the public relations' department of our branch and the people there will explain everything to you."

"Helen Cutter wants you to confirm that it's her? Tell her that Stephen will be coming out to talk with her, sure enough."

Click! The closing of the cell phone cause Connor and Abby to wince – and then Caroline whirled around, and the look on her face caused Connor and Abby to gulp.

"That witch," Caroline hissed, "knows my cell phone number. _She knows my cell phone number!_"

"Well, maybe via the late Leek-" Abby tried to smooth the other woman's nerves, but Caroline seemingly ignored.

"Stephen – get out of the car and join your friends," she continued flatly. "Michael – stick!"

Michael, Caroline's big Brazilian mastiff, lying in the back of her van, shifted and passed Caroline a 'stick' – a rifle wrapped in some cloths. Wordlessly, Caroline took it and shifted Stephen's seat backwards, revealing a box full of ammo.

"This," she continued in that same tense, clipped tone, "is a 10-gauge shotgun. If you see her doing something wrong – just drop and roll away, and I'll do my best to drop her and her friends for good."

"You cannot do that! It'd be murder!"

"Then, Stephen," Caroline said flatly, "you better hone your instincts to the maximum – and don't forget, if she begins to mess with your head just too much, you can always drop down and let me drop her! As my parents say – no one, but no one messes with us and gets away with it!"

"Charming folks they must be," Connor gulped. "Makes me happy that I never met them."

"Stephen – go. Nick and Becker are getting impatient."

Stephen hurriedly went.

* * *

"You took your time," Nick muttered, as he, Becker and Stephen began to walk up to Helen and her cronies.

"Yeah, and she told me that she's backing us up with a 10-gauge shotgun," Stephen muttered back.

Becker's eyes bulged. "10-gauge? And she's got a license for it?"

"That wasn't the time or place to ask her that – she's itching to take a shot at Helen and Co., though she did tell me to give her a signal if I want her to fire."

"Good. What's the signal?" Becker muttered, but it was too late – they have arrived.

"Hello Stephen, Nick – and Becker, right?" Helen said calmly, her voice still rather unemotional for her. "Glad to see you so prompt."

"Cut the chat, Helen," Nick replied. "Who are your friends and why we're here?"

"The one in the robes is Iymrith, self-proclaimed Doom of the Desert," Helen replied.

Iymrith, as far as Becker could see besides the wide sunglasses, had of a somewhat oriental appearance, including a tall hairdo, the long, albeit well-groomed, fingernails – almost like talons, actually – and some rather fancy, flowing, bluish-black robes with white design on them. In short, even if not knowing that she had proclaimed herself to be Doom of the Desert, Becker would have thought her to be a harmless, if eccentric, personality.

"And _she_, the other one, is Melinoe – and she's deadly." Helen's voice was completely devoid of sarcasm, merely causing the others to stare at Melinoe more intensely than at eccentric Iymrith.

"Deadly," Becker repeated, as he looked at a woman who resembled some actress or other from some TV series, just older, in a more mature, weathered sort of way. Her skin was darker than a typical Englishwoman's and her facial features... Becker frowned. There was something off about her features – and then the woman smiled brightly, and Becker forgot all about it.

"Please," Melinoe said cheerfully, "sit. There are sausages in tomato sauce still – Iymrith didn't eat all of them yet."

"We haven't come here for a picnic," Nick snapped, wishing that he had the chance to talk with Caroline – there's nothing like the knowledge that at your command a 10-gauge shotgun will blast the brains out of your interlocutrix to give you self-confidence. "We come here because there's apparently some sort of an emergency."

"No, _you_ came because there's an emergency – Iymrith and I came to talk."

"Talk about what?"

"Him," Melinoe promptly pointed to Stephen, who blinked and slowly turned red. So had Helen, but Nick hadn't noticed that. "Now sit down!" The last words were a command, not a statement, and Nick and others complied, albeit grudgingly. "And listen!"

For a moment, it was as if a shadow had come across the small garden with its twisted, bizarre trees, and cloaked everything in twilight – and then Melinoe smiled brightly again, and the shadow vanished.

"Now then – where to start? Oh yes, in the beginning. In the beginning, there were time anomalies and they were in the end. Throughout the eternity of time, strange creatures entered the human world, starting mythos about some unbelievable, monstrous beasts, and humans had ventured through those time anomalies as well, leaving behind them rumours of fairy worlds, where a night there could become a decade here. Are you with me so far?"

"Go on," Nick growled. The first part, at least, wasn't so far off from what he had theorized himself.

"Very well. Now, leaving aside for now the matter of parallel worlds, the truth was that most people that had went off into the 'fairy world' usually ended up in a different time period instead, where they perished – or adjusted and survived – even prospered there. But that's not my point. The point that I am trying to make is that there were only very few people who actually adjusted to the point of figuring out how the time anomalies actually worked and used them, let alone harness their power."

"Like Helen had?" Stephen asked, the incident with the suddenly vanished post-it note still fresh in his mind.

"Well, I was talking more about myself and Iymrith here, but, yes, so had Helen. In fact, for a while, she was going in a very specific direction – and then you died and she decided to replay it all in a different way because of her love for you."

There was a pause, as Becker just half-turned to look at Helen and Stephen in a new light, Helen and Stephen looked as if they would rather be anywhere else but here, Nick just growled, Melinoe smirked and Iymrith ate another sausage. And then Helen straightened her posture and looked Nick straight in the eye.

"Well, Nick, why don't you and your friends look at their shadows instead?"

Instinctively, Nick and others looked at the shadows of the other two women – only to see none. The wide-spread tree-top shadows very mottling the grounds very much indeed – but not enough to obscure the fact that neither Iymrith nor Melinoe had any shadows of their own.

"Helen – very good. A point in your court," Melinoe spoke now with complete seriousness, quite different from the former mischievous tone that she had used. "And for that, your friends get a prize peek at what lies behind." She smiled, or rather, her lips withdrew into the flesh of her jaws, revealing rows of sharp, inhuman teeth, built like bars in a fish trap. Next to her, Iymrith's face spread out and forwards in a semi-circle, giving her a face like a toad's, but with wide, sail-like ears and a single horn in the middle of her forehead.

"Now, the longer one uses and utilizes the power of time," Melinoe continued, as her nose withdrew into her face, giving her a face of a viper fish, and her dark glasses came off, revealing two pits of burning blue flame, "the less human one becomes. Your ex-wife was following this path nicely enough, but now – she does not. So, Iymrith and I decided to see what she has planned. And in this case our decision manifests in an invasive army, approaching your world from the other side of that door of that house, coming here in... well, here's a sand clock for your time measurement. Stop the army or die-out, that's our final word."

With those words she and Iymrith – who had grown ever more draconic as Melinoe restarted speaking – stood up and vanished in the white glow of one or two time anomalies, leaving just a big sand clock as a sign that they have ever been there.

* * *

As soon as Helen's companions had vanished in a time anomaly – or was it _two_ time anomalies? – Jenny and others immediately joined the others at the picnic table.

"Nick – what has happened?" Jenny began, but Nick made a shushing motion and turned to Helen.

"What's going on?" he bellowed all over the grounds. "These – these things – What are you up to?"

"I believe I have sent your friend – you know, the one with the male gender, long hair and technical inclination an e-mail explaining as much as I could."

"The full quotation of Yeats' poem and a screwy PS do not a full explanation make!"

There was a pause as everyone stared at Nick as if he had sprouted a horn in his forehead as well. "Man, you sounded a bit like Yoda right now," Connor said.

Nick glared and Connor quickly hid behind Abby and Caroline, who still held onto her shotgun.

"Very well," Helen spoke, bringing Nick's attention back to her. "When I transformed Claudia into Jenny I took this world into my fold and made it mine."

"_Yours_? Who do you think you are? A goddess of some sorts?"

"Nick? Remember the room – and the end of the museum incident?" Stephen spoke up quickly. "I mean, we saw what happened to the future predators and raptors and the statuary-"

"I don't care," Nick growled. "I will not bow down and call her a goddess."

"And I never intended for you to do that, Nick," Helen exhaled heavily. "All I want, right now, is for us to co-operate against whatever army Melinoe and Iymrith have cooked up."

"Well, prove that it is real and not some sort of a practical joke," Nick snapped.

"Certainly," Helen got up as well, pulled a rucksack from beneath the picnic table and began to walk up to the house, beckoning to the others to follow her.

Nick looked at Caroline. "If I give you the signal, will you pump her full of lead?"

"Sorry, but I made my arrangements with Stephen – talk with him about it," Caroline shrugged, keeping a steady grip on her firearm.

"Stephen-"

"Becker's the one responsible for such decisions, officially – talk with him."

"Becker-"

"These women had no shadow, professor. Helen Cutter does. Whatever these two were, she is not one of them."

"No, I am not – but back then, at Leek's hide-out I was," Helen stopped at the house's porch and turned to face the others. "What you're looking at is essentially an older, under-improved model... if I were a car."

"Helen, get to the main point," Nick growled back.

"Very well," Helen nodded and opened the door.

An entire lost world lay upon its' other side.

* * *

It was a world unlike anything that England could over. It consisted of hills and valley, covered in patches in woodland coppices that had almost as many vines as there were trees. Occasionally, a bird or two would fly out of these coppices, their loud cries resonating through the air. The air was cloudless, but not clear – slightly foggy instead; and it was very, very hot – much hotter than it ever could be in England.

"Binoculars," Abby muttered, and one of Becker's underlings gave her his. "Right. These birds are cockatoos, native to Australia."

"And you know this how?"

"Hello-o, zoo worker here! It's part of my job to know such things."

"That's right, there are lizards here, after all," Caroline nodded in agreement. "Naturally she knows something about this land after all."

"Precisely," Abby nodded. "The zoo once had to put on this big exhibit, and I was one of those responsible for the lizards – the perentie as one of the biggest, and the frilled lizard as one of the oddest."

A small pause followed these words, but neither Abby nor Caroline seemed interested in continuing this topic. Privately, Abby was happy to see that Caroline seemed to be returning in treating her as the Lizard Girl – she wasn't particularly happy about her new Miss Maitland moniker: coming from Caroline, who was her age if not her height, it sounded simply... incorrect.

"Uh, anyways, you were speaking about an explanation?" Connor spoke up suddenly, as it became obvious that Abby and Caroline's diversion came to an end. "Right?"

"Yes. The thing is that time is the fourth dimension of our reality," Helen nodded. "We exist in it from future to past, from life till death."

"From future to past?"

"Yes. As we grow older, events that have existed in our future – like, say, our birthdays – become first our present, and then our past. That's the first rule. Secondly, this dimension isn't exactly geometrically compatible with the other three, and thus, when this rule is altered, time anomalies are created. Since in this world everything – from slugs to stars - that exist get to change and evolve, the time anomalies also evolve – as in this occasion, when a time anomaly had a chance to change and spread for 14 years."

"Oh man – this is just like that sabre-tooth incident," Connor muttered.

"And finally, the most important thing – for me, anyways – is that the fourth dimension is not so much physical as energetic – that is to say," Helen visibly hesitated for the first time during today, "in our world, you can touch anything but time – in the fourth dimension you cannot touch anything save for time. It's a webbed maze without beginning or end, and while you can manipulate it like a spider, the catch is that you cannot fully exist there while you exist here, and sooner or later you will have to make a choice...and only very rarely you remain honest to yourself to admit that the choice was wrong _and _do something about it... Anyways, for comparison, the reason why Melinoe and Iymrith don't have shadows is that _they_ no longer fully exist here at all. They no longer have 'proper' bodies, but rather manifestations of chronological energy-"

"Helen – get a grip. You're saying nonsense."

"Connor Temple. First of all, remember Einstein's statement – E=mc2?"

"Um, yeah."

"Then you must realize that like algebraic statements it can be read truly from _both_ directions and secondly, who says that that 'E' cannot be chronological? And to think that I thought that you were the smart one here!"

By now Connor looked as wretched as he did in the past on one of Nick Cutter's original lectures whenever he was called upon to answer a question and instead had to admit that he didn't know the answer _and_ had forgotten all the previously studied material. Fortunately, Abby came to the rescue.

"What the-? Look over that hill!"

* * *

And indeed, the sight was something to behold. Approaching the small group was an army... an army of 'lizardmen' albeit covered in feathery, rather than scaly, skin. They differed from small, 'hobbit'-sized specimens with bluish-green plumage to 'giants' almost three meters in height, with plumage of fiery red colour.

"In the name of Darwin, these are those theoretical dinosauroids of Connor's!" Nick exhaled, forgetting briefly his feelings towards Helen. "But how?"

"Iymrith," Helen shrugged. "She likes to work with reptiles. Melinoe – not so much."

"Fine – what do we do?"

Helen exhaled. "I'm sorry, but you will have to figure it out on your own. By the agreement that I had made with Melinoe, if I help you, Melinoe can step in and erase me from all times, past, present and future – permanently. I told that she was deadly, didn't I? Not to mention older, stronger and, probably, smarter than me by an unbelievable exponential number. You have to do it yourself, or admit defeat."

"So, what do we do? Bring back the mammoth and tear down the building?"

"I don't think that a mammoth can help us out this time," Caroline suddenly spoke up, pointing in the direction of the other side of the door, where Michael, the Brazilian mastiff... was waiting at the side of the car, looking decidedly unhappy at the house. "Michael may not be scared of prehistoric cats, or even mammoths... but he is of this place. I bet that the mammoth would feel the same thing, if not worse – it hasn't been trained as much as Michael was."

"What's going on here?" Danny Quinn was back, on top of everything else.

* * *

In fact, Danny Quinn had never left. Caroline's carefully worded instructions had done nothing in regards to finishing off the raging fire in his belly – and he had good reason. After all, it was his brother that had died 14 years ago in this very house without anyone ever finding the culprit. And it was his duty to find out just what had happened here, no matter how much time had passed since then. And no one, not even a daughter of one of the meanest police officers that he knew, nor workers of the government itself would deter him from doing so. And thus, he never left to phone by the number that Caroline had dictated to him; instead, he just drove to his nearest convenient vantage point and prepared to observe.

And there were things to observe indeed! First of all, two of the original ladies had sprouted fangs, horns, and all sorts of other inhuman things, before vanishing into thin air before Danny's very eyes. And second the last woman and the men that had talked with her and the vanished women were joined by a mini-army that included the aforementioned daughter, armed with one of the nastiest shotguns that Danny had ever seen.

At any rate, the army joined the remaining quartet, and all of them went into the house, where they all seemed to have vanished without a trace. Since the house was The House, it grew beyond Danny's self-control to just calmly stand there and do nothing. Consequently, he drove back, got out of the car, and walked in.

And experienced a shock. The insides of the house were gone, replaced by an entire different new world – a tropical, or at least a subtropical one. The mini-army under the command of the original four (or was it six) was there, already comfortably fit into it, and were staring at something raising a cloud of dust a long distance away.

"What's going on here?" Danny erupted, becoming finally confused.

"Oh, we're just preparing to fight of an invasion of intelligent, civilized, and militaristic dinosauroids from an alternate timeline," Becker replied before anyone else could. "Being a civilian I tell you to leave the battlefield right now."

"No," Danny growled. "That damn place took away my brother from me. If it's going to be finished-off, I want in."

"You're talking about the army?"

"No. The house."

Becker blinked. "The house?"

"Yes. It is the source of all this evil, it must be gone."

"So how do you finish off a house?"

"By physically demolishing it, of course," Danny shrugged, implying that it was obvious.

With a corner of his eye, Nick saw a small smile appear on Helen's face, as if Danny was a dim pupil that had a bright idea. Not so long ago, this would have been enough for him to become dead-set opposed to this idea, but now... there was the fact that Helen had saved Stephen's life, and helped them out at the museum, and she did have a shadow when her interlocutrixes had not – plus he did agree to give her a benefit of the doubt. Therefore, instead of turning onto this idea immediately, he turned to others instead.

"Do any of you know a demolition company?" he said flatly, "or should we just hijack the nearest construction site and hope that Helen will be able to repeat what she has done with the deinothere?"

"Hmm, let's see," Caroline said thoughtfully, as she pulled out a small phone-and-address booklet from a tummy pouch that she wore (albeit when working with the ARC field team only), and began to flip from it. "Ah, there we go, a wrecking and scrap yard company. Definitely has the wrecking machinery that we can use. Had me train several Doberman pinschers for guard duty, if anyone is wondering. Now all we need is Ms. Lewis do her public relations magic that she is good at, and it's a start."

"I, ah, do my 'magic' in person a lot better than on the phone," Jenny said guiltily. "Can you drive me there ASAP immediately?"

"If the grim defender here will lend police assistance – I probably can," Caroline nodded calmly. "Are you in, Danny Quinn?"

"Yes," the police officer growled. "Let's go."

And away they went.

* * *

Caroline Steele, Jenny was sure, had the potential of winning the Grand Prize at the Monaco races or wherever. The younger woman was unwaveringly following the route on her GPS, going at speeds so high that they were barely legal.

In the back portion of Caroline's car, Danny Quinn and Michael were looking at each other with deep suspicion. Neither knew each other very well and had a natural distrust of any strangers that appeared in their life. Since Danny Quinn was a fully trained police office and Michael was a fully trained guard dog, easily weighing as much as some fully grown men, Jenny fervently hoped that the two would not get into a fight for dominance, because otherwise, it would be one bad and bloody face-off.

Speaking of face-offs – Jenny realized that if Helen will stop being the tormentor that she used to be for good and instead will become an ally or at least someone helpful then... where did it leave her? Despite herself, Jenny remembered Nick's disaster of a birthday party, when a giant armoured squid had almost dragged her and Nick's mother into the prehistoric sea... and Helen helped them to deal with it. That woman, undoubtedly, was a bitch _and_ a witch rolled in one, but now that she was trying to change her personality, which led to-

"We're here," Caroline said, shaking Jenny from her reverie. "Let's go and talk."

"Yes, let's – but I bet that you'll be doing most of the listening."

"Well, duh!"

* * *

This was bizarre on so many levels, Connor Temple muttered, as he carefully sat back and saw Becker's men dig up some sort of an impromptu earthwork dig-out in a semi-circle before them. Abby and Stephen were looking through their binoculars, periodically talking to Nick or aforementioned Becker. This left only Helen, who was sitting quietly, blending into the scenery almost literally.

Connor sighed. Helen and Nick clearly had issues between themselves, far wider than the 65 millennia that separated the modern world and this one. Clearly, Helen's decision to stop being a-a fourth-dimensional character and re-start being a human would be just the first step to bridging this divide – if they live through this day, of course.

Connor _had_ asked Helen what would happen if they just would go back through the door and close it. Upon learning that this meant forfeiting it all, and that was a worst case scenario, he shut up. Worst case scenarios did not bear preliminary dwelling on them – it'd be better to think of something else. Like, why Abby has been giving Caroline odd looks since this morning, or, after this is finished, will they just go back to their routine – just going after each and every anomaly and shut them down, while knowing that there were people – extra-dimensional people – possibly looking at them from the other side?

And then there were dinosauroids. As one of Connor's old room-mates tended to say – "It'd be so cool, if it wasn't going to hurt us." Connor always secretly wanted to meet a sentient dinosaur ever since seeing them on a BBC Horizon program, and now that he almost had...

...they were coming to kill him, because the binoculars had shown them to be armed – better armed than Becker's boys – and without any white flags to wave in order to surrender. This situation sucked, big time, and he didn't have any ideas as to how to make it better.

...or, rather, he did – but he hated it all the same. This was the exact antithesis of what he had believed throughout all of his life (which wasn't all that long, admittedly). Still, he couldn't just sit there and twiddle his thumbs doing nothing.

"Nick," he said slowly as he got up and walked up to his leader. "I have just remembered something – fire."

* * *

When Connor told Nick what he remembered from his studies about the Pleistocene extinctions (admittedly, he had never been big on Australia, being more interested in the American ground sloths, but still), Nick just gave the younger man a very odd look (in a disturbing kind of way).

"Fire," the professor turned government field agent repeated as if he didn't hear him correctly the first time. "You're talking about fire."

"Aha," Connor said miserably. "The coppices around us are eucalyptus tree. Some good sparks, and there'll be a blaze or a bushfire between us and them. The dinosauroids, I mean. 'Course, I don't know in which direction it will go-"

"Downwind," Helen said quietly, as she had approached even quieter than talking pair. "The air is going through the door and away from us. Fire travels in the direction that the wind blows. You start a fire and it will go away from us and towards them." She sounded just as happy as Connor was, which was essentially a zero on the happiness scale.

"Well, let's give them – I mean Jenny, Caroline and the crazy cop – some more time before turning on the blaze," Becker said, as he had also sneaked up on their discussion without them noticing. "This maybe war according to... those two, but we have a Geneva Convention and what-not. We must try to be people, I think."

There was a pause as Becker blinked. "Um, where did that come from?"

"People," Helen said in a more loud voice, "tend to use their brains when they're backed into a corner – and that's exactly what you're doing."

Becker just gave her a crooked smile in return to the compliment. "Gee, thanks."

"You're welcome."

* * *

"Caroline?"

"Hmmm?"

"Just how many people you know?"

"Plenty. If I sell or train their dogs for them, I tend to check up on them every once in a while, to see if they're treating them right. How's that for an explanation?"

Jenny exhaled. "And yet, somehow or other, this works for you, while I... have problems."

"Well, I have problems – mostly related to my family, and yet," Caroline paused, "they seem to pale in comparison's to Danny's. What about yours?"

"That was a cruel, thoughtless and tactless statement!"

"Yes, exactly – and that's why you're the public relations person, and I'm not."

"Still, when you were dating Connor-"

"I wasn't dating Connor – I was just doing my job. If I'd been _really_ dating him and had taken him to meet my family, he would've been eaten alive, metaphorically speaking. Anyways – I think that we're back."

"Yes, we are – and what _is_ Danny doing?"

* * *

"And so, the approaching army has come down the hillside and into the last valley between us and them, and we-" Connor paused and turned down the vocal recorder. "Okay, that's just nuts. Giant prehistoric beasts alone were crazy, but this – this is insanity gone surreal. How do you deal with this?" he turned to the closest person, namely Helen, who looked at him as if he was a particularly fascinating specimen of a Devonian amphibian, but answered anyways, in a rather curt voice:

"I drew sketches. And when it stopped working all the same, I went back in time, and just died, giving myself a chance to do it in another way."

Connor blinked and moved carefully away from her. Seriously, as far as people went, Helen Cutter was the one to be dealt with better via distance, and not up close. She didn't look so good either – flushed in a feverish manner would be probably a more precise description overall. Naturally, this was strange – the sun was hot but not that hot, but and for himself, Connor didn't feel so-

"Connor, stop moving around," Abby hissed at her part-time boyfriend. "Seriously, have you got ants in your pants or something?"

"No-no, it's more of an awl," Connor tried to smile reassuringly and failed at it spectacularly. "This whole thing – it's wrong, it's not us, I'm sure that once we get back and we recover, wake-up, whatever, it will all be just a bad dream-"

"Connor – this cannot be a dream. This is just too real," Abby snapped as she pointed out at the prehistoric Australian scenery, "but on some level you're right. This isn't us, we just do the weird and strange prehistoric animals, not alternate reality armies-"

"I know and I'm sorry about this," Helen suddenly muttered from behind the younger adults. "It's just that whenever Melinoe gets involved, everything just falls apart."

Abby whirled around, with an angry look in her eyes. "You keep quiet. Without you around it was all kind of simple... We just took the animals and sent them back – or, yes, we kept some of them. With you here, things are now getting bizarre and, and, totally out of character somehow!!"

"Yes, yes they are – didn't you read my e-mail? I explained it in the first part," Helen said, albeit backing-up slightly.

"Yes – yes, she sort of did," Connor said, wincing. "Still, it was kind of an _obscure_ e-mail as far as explanations went, you know?"

Helen kept her mouth shut. At this moment in time telling Connor and Abby that old habits die hard and that she still thought of the two of them as two of her less useful pebble-pawns when she had sent the e-mail would be counter-productive for her plans, so she kept quiet.

The next moment, several things happened at once. The dinosauroids went into their final charge, leaping and squealing as they burst from the vine jungle. Second, Becker – reluctantly – ordered his men to set the field afire. Third – before Becker's command could be carried out and a bushfire would begin, the time anomaly behind them shook.

"I think that's our cue to leave," Helen said instead, a small smile breaking onto her face for the first time since Melinoe's suggestion of war.

* * *

"Ms. Lewis, we're here."

"And still alive?"

"Yes, though not for the grace of Danny. That's why I kept away from him and the police district at which he works – well, that, and the fact that he has issues."

"Issues? He looks maniacal. He is demolishing a house with a unique time anomaly in it, and-"

"-the others don't seem to be minding too much," Caroline frowned. "And Michael-" she shot a look at her Brazilian mastiff who once more seemed to be cowing in the back of the car if a man-sized dog could cower "-isn't acting his usual self either. Let me get my gun and then we'll see."

* * *

"Has anyone else feels odd?" Nick muttered as they stared at the remains of the old house. "Does anyone else here feels... relieved or something?"

"You mean relief from the fact that this crazy day is over and we didn't get to fight human-lizards like we expected to," Becker echoed. "Then yeah, I am. Now all that's left is to explain it all to Lester, and, um, your ex-wife is still here."

"What?" Nick half-turned around and saw Helen, staring... at the big sand clock, in which the last grains of sand had run out – some time ago.

"What is she still doing here?"

"Haven't we explained? She's giving up her previous approach to life." It was Melinoe, still shadowed by Iymrith, now looking a lot less smug. "Well, has given up already, really. Congratulations, Helen – I really wasn't sure if you'd be able to beat me at the art of psychological warfare."

"Psychological warfare?!" Nick erupted. "What can _you_ know about-"

"I am Melinoe, demon queen of nightmares, child of night. I have dwelled far longer and have reached far greater than your wife ever had, before she had a change of heart. I can do far, far more than stick you into a theatre erected by Iymrith. You don't know me, Nick Cutter, and you don't know your ex-wife-to-be, but we know you." Melinoe smiled, revealing once again a full set of inhuman teeth. "And I really hope that you have seen the last of me and Iymrith – for your sake. For remember – war doesn't have to be physical. I prefer to act subtle. Iymrith – we're leaving. Oh, and Mr. Temple – I liked your idea, if you ever have another and want to share, give me a chant, and we'll have a talk."

A briefly opening and closing time anomaly took away Melinoe and Iymrith. For his part, Connor Temple blinked – Melinoe's offer was rather unexpected and unpleasant – and looked at Helen who looked back at him, smiling faintly and looking than ever since this morning. "So? Do I officially surrender to you know or can you be satisfied with just slapping the handcuffs on-?"

It was then and there that Nick Cutter had a complete and total personality break-down.

* * *

But then again, James Lester didn't have a very good day today either. "You have participated in what? You have experienced what? You have met whom?"

"Well, Helen Cutter did surrender into our custody," Jenny Lewis said meekly, as it became obvious that James Lester was experiencing a Cutter moment, and wasn't feeling very reasonable right now.

"I know that!" Lester shouted, but apparently he was calming down somewhat. "I know. It's just that I like my day predictable: we get to work, we deal with time anomalies and we deal with various animals. Never before – and hopefully never again – had we had to deal with characters from Ancient Greek mythos! And from anywhere else too, for that matter! I want my world to make sense again!"

"Yes sir," Jenny nodded slowly, while keeping her face straight. "It will."

Though Jenny Lewis didn't know it, she was wrong: Helen Cutter had been finally captured (albeit of her own volition) by the ARC, and that meant that nothing at the ARC was going to be exactly the same again.

_To be continued..._


	4. Chapter 4

**The other way**

**Chapter 3**

The morning dawned in an undetermined, windy sort of way, as the sun shone dully through the veil of clouds, and a wind, rather brisk and chilly for the end of spring swept through the streets. It also crawled into every and any unsecured opening or entrance with tentacles of relative chill, and greedily reached to suck out any sort of warmth that it could find. It reached through a not-fully-closed window of Abby and Connor's house and it struck.

"Abby!" Connor Temple had woken for once of his own volition and wasn't happy about it. "What's with the opening windows in this weather – do you want Rex to catch a chill?"

"Sorry Connor," Abby sounded half-contrite, half-absent as she walked up to the window, sliding it shut, with a towel wrapped around her hair as the only indication that she had already taken a shower while Connor had been still sleeping. "Guess I am not quite myself this morning-"

Instantly Connor went from indignant to concern. "Are you all right from that crazy yesterday?"

"Oh, I am fine about that – well, as fine as I can be after a day of psychological warfare," Abby paused. "Anyways, I called Caroline – she and I have some unresolved issues from yesterday's morning to resolve – and she didn't answer. So I called her cell phone – and her mum picked it up instead."

"Her mum," Connor echoed.

"Yeah. Apparently, after yesterday Caroline went to her parents for advice, and-" Abby paused and then plunged in, "Connor, have you ever thought about talking to your folks? I mean not about the ARC, but, just, in general..."

"I'd rather not," Connor said slowly, as memories and thoughts of his own family made themselves felt. "My parents never approved my choice of career or my approach to life. As soon as I could afford it, I was so out of there...and I never really looked back. Make no mistake, my family is my family, but I would rather have it from a distance than up close. And you?"

Abby paused, looking oddly at Connor. "I don't know. I mean my folks don't like it either that I work with lizards at the zoo, but still... Maybe I should give them a call – I mean family is family, and I ought to keep in touch..." she trailed off, realizing that Connor isn't going to interrupted, challenge, or somehow other respond to her.

"Well, be my guest," Connor finally spoke. "You, uh, want privacy for that?"

At that moment Abby's stomach chose to growl. "Right after breakfast, I suppose," she said faintly. "Whose turn it is to cook, anyways?"

"Rex's?" Connor suggested carefully. Abby flashed him her first grin of that morning.

"Nice try, Connor. Start cooking!"

* * *

"So – that was Abby Maitland," Mrs. Steele said as she carefully slid the cell phone back to her daughter. "An interestingly-sounding girl – a friend of yours?"

"Not really, I cannot say," Caroline shook her head. "The only thing in common we have, really, is our ages, I suppose."

"Mmm, perhaps, but she did call to check out on you," Mrs. Steele shook her head. "That got to count for something."

Caroline shrugged. "Yes, well, I guess I have a different set of priorities and concerns, and speaking of them, what's your advice?"

"Hmm," this time it was Caroline's other mother that spoke up. "Our government – and may it continue to remain as it currently is for the next one hundred or more so years – has a tendency to see only the big picture, and in broad strokes as well, forgetting that the devil is always in the details. Plus, I believe you told us that that boss of yours, Lester, has some issues of his own?"

"I'm just telling you what I have seen and heard," Caroline shrugged uneasily. "I'm not really interesting in drawing my own conclusions on this one."

Caroline's parents exchanged looks between each other. "Well then, child," Caroline's mother spoke up quietly. "Then maybe we ought to come to your Center this morning."

Caroline shrugged – she wasn't exactly in a confrontational mood today. "It's your call," she said quietly, "I'll just go and start the car, shall I?"

As she left to do it, Caroline's parents exchanged concerned looks – James Lester was going to get an earful today and no mistake!

* * *

"Stephen – what a nice surprise!" Helen Cutter's lips formed a smile – not a very good one, but only due to the lack of practice. "And how are you feeling this morning?"

"Concerned for you," Stephen sighed as he sat. "Somehow I got a feeling that yesterday's evening could have been handled better."

"No, it could not," Helen said sharply, giving Stephen a rather familiar and pointed look. "The change was too abrupt, Melinoe's involvement in that situation too deep for my handling to be nice," she paused. "And then again, I remember memories from another life of mine – and trust me when I say that that path has not been any better, not at all."

Stephen remembered the time when he had seen Helen and her clone (or was it a clone?) standing face to face. Now that he had time to think about it, and have an individual Helen for an initial comparison, he could clearly realize and remember several key differences between the two.

"The Helen – the other Helen that has been there with us in Leek's HQ," he said slowly, "she had those glasses – the kind that Melinoe and the other one wore. Does it mean that she, that you-"

"Yeah, I kind of-sort of went that path," Helen shook her head, "but as Master Tolkien had once written, I felt like a piece of butter stretched over too much bread. Melinoe may have no problem with it, and Iymrith – well, I don't want to think about Iymrith at all, as the damn thing was never human from the start – but the more I went, the more I wondered just what the Hell am I thinking by going down this road? Power was supposed to be a means for me, not an end. And so I say, pondered, and made a choice – no, I made a decision. And so, as far as I am concerned, this is an improvement from where I've been, an improvement!"

Stephen was quite aware that Helen's hand that was currently grasped his own was hot and trembling. The next moment Helen also became aware of that grasp of hers and turned red, probably for the first time in a long while. "So, uh, anyways, why are you here-"

"Lester will probably have interrogated with all the angles covered," Stephen slowly moved closer – an inch or so – to his interlocutrix. "He would have probably started yesterday, if he hadn't been so busy reading our reports and planning his strategy for today. But now, though-"

Helen shrugged. "I doubt that Lester wants to scare me that much, and I _am_ ready to co-operate now, so I doubt that he'll have much excuse to go overboard. And as for me being not scared or concerned – well, the day has just began and who knows what it will bring yet..." some of the old Helen had tinted her last statement and facial expression, causing Stephen to frown in concern. "Oh, don't look at me like that. This will not be any of my doing, not at all!"

"Honestly."

"Oh yes. Sometimes – well, most of the times in my opinion – people have to lie in beds of their own making. And on this day, James Lester will have to realize it so very, very much..."

* * *

James Lester was in a relatively good mood today. The unpredictability and bizarreness of yesterday has gone with the break of a new day – albeit of a not very warm or sunny one – and he was now ready to face the challenges of a new one. Therefore, it was only karmically appropriate that the first person that he met at the ARC was Caroline Steele who looked rather subdued and unhappy – more so than usual.

"Ms. Steele," James Lester said with a slight grimace – during her still brief period of work the dog trainer has gotten onto his nerves – "what do you want now?"

"Lester," Caroline bit off curtly, "I want to re-evaluate my position at the ARC. As we decided last time, it was going to be a part-time job only."

"Yes?"

"Well, you forgot to add the part where complete strangers knew about me!" Caroline snapped. "I don't like it!"

"Well, it's not like I can do anything about it-" Lester began, but Caroline looked at him, and some long-buried self-preservation instinct kicked in.

"Listen carefully, Mr. James. As a part-time employee, I only have to train dogs – not give others free rides. To do that, I need either a full-time position, complete with pay and job security, or – I want out, completely out, as I have initially wanted to, with you paying me for the time I have spent working you being the only satisfaction that I need."

"Satisfaction you need," James began and stopped. He had read the reports of Abby and Connor from the previous incident, how Caroline's voice has turned tense and her promise to blast Helen and her cohorts (or former cohorts?) apart with a 10-gauge shotgun had been as plain as day. Somehow, looking at her now he had no problem in believing that she would if she could – and vice versa.

"Look," he carefully began, suspecting in his gut that right now his interlocutrix was tense enough to have a total emotional breakdown if the discussion went in a wrong direction. "Today is a bad day for this kind of decision, we-"

Caroline grabbed him by the collar and pulled forwards, while glaring at him with eyes the temperature of a lunar reflection on the barrel of her gun. "Then make the decision now!"

James Lester gulped.

* * *

"Nick! Cutter! Wait!"

Nick slowly turned around. As far as clothing and other accessories went, Jenny Lewis looked as impeccably as always, but her face looked redder and more flustered than usual. The way that her hands were twirling around the closed cell phone clearly indicated a state of emotional disarray as well. "Yes, Jenny?"

"Nick, uh, Cutter," for some reason Jenny sneaked one more peak at the closed cell phone and the determinedly stuck into her handbag. "I was wondering if you were free this weekend-"

"Uh," Nick paused, thinking quickly. "If there aren't any time anomaly related emergencies-"

As if on purpose, the alarms came on, indicating that one such emergency has just become active.

"Oooh!" Jenny looked as if she was going to explode. "Nick Cutter, this is so not over-"

"Yes, Jenny, I know that."

"Good!"

It could be anyone's guess as to what this misdirected conversation could have led to, but at that moment Caroline Steele emerged from the corridor that led to Lester's office looking, well, as she usually had. Considering that yesterday had left her rather badly shaken (according to Stephen and others, at least), this was something of a surprise, actually, something that Nick didn't fail to point out; Caroline, however, had just shrugged and walked away, clearly having recovered her inner balance by that time.

Connor and Abby – who met them at the main time anomaly detector – noticed it as well. "Caroline," Abby cautiously began, "we need to talk?"

"Oh? About what?" Apparently, whatever inner balance Caroline had regained wasn't enough to keep her oblivious to Abby's own tone of voice.

"About you calling me Miss Maitland."

"What about it? Isn't it who you are?" Caroline's voice was clearly, carefully, controlled.

"Ye-es," Abby growled, clearly beginning to get riled, "bu-ut, I'd rather you not call me that. You can call me Lizard Girl if you want to, but not Miss Maitland – _please_! It just makes me feel... old."

"An interesting point, but," Caroline leaned forwards, suddenly eager to talk back, "you see, after yesterday's little stunt of Helen Cutter or whatever-her-last-name-is, I realized that when Lester had roped me into working here, he left an opening."

"What – what are you talking about?"

"He roped me into being a part-time worker here, promising protection of the government and whatever. As yesterday's incident had shown, that is not enough. So – either I am allowed to leave this place free, in which case all the baggage that comes from associating with the Center here, or I am made a full-time worker, in which case me and my family are given a better government insurance deal and all that it entails."

"So why so smug?" Abby insisted.

"Well, as me and Lester were discussing this, I noticed something on his desk. Apparently, a mammoth daily needs 100 kg of grass and leaves, 20 kg of beets or carrots, 6 kg of oats, 2 kg of barley and wheat flour, 100 grams of mineral and vitamin mix and also of salt. The mammoth alone is eating over a 100 kg of food daily – transfer it to cash and you get an even bigger number. Add to it the food of my dogs and the prehistoric cats that we have rescued from the museum, add in Lester's speed about financial straits that the ARC has found itself in due to Leek – and I think I can safely assume about which way Lester's decision," Caroline's lips twisted in a grimacing smile. "How's that for a lark?"

Abby stared. "You saying that you would abandon us just like that?"

Caroline shrugged. "Lester pretty much dragged me into this – naturally it was only a matter of time before I did something about it, so there."

"That's just cruel," Abby muttered. "I was beginning to think that you were better than when I initially thought."

"Since when?"

"Since, since, oh I don't know – I guess I just did!"

"Well, I guess you need to get out more and make some new friends of your own age and gender besides me! Just who do you think I am? Some sort of a secondary actress in the wonderful theatrical world of You?"

Abby turned red (Caroline had turned brown already before that) and was ready to explode.

"Girls," Connor's voice sounded as if he would rather be somewhere else – like already at the time anomaly's site – "we have pinpointed the time anomaly – it's in a hospital at West London."

There was a small thud as Jenny Lewis accidentally dropped her handbag. "West London?"

"Yeah. What me to pinpoint where exactly?"

"No! No need to!" Jenny quickly said. "Girls, Connor get into the car. Nick – where'd he go?"

Nick Cutter just wasn't there.

* * *

Nick Cutter was busy walking through the corridor, looking determined to do something distasteful in regards to himself. He walked up to Helen's cell, where Helen was busy telling good-bye to Stephen and cleared his throat.

"Yes?" Both Helen and Stephen turned to face him. "What is it?"

"Helen – I believe that you're coming with us," Nick grimaced. "Just for the record, I still don't trust you, but since you've been trying to be helpful to us, I'm giving you a chance," he paused. "Besides, I doubt that you'll be able to do any harm to us other than escaping at a time convenient to you," he added as an afterwards.

"Oh Nick, you're piece of bedrock and your mother's son," Helen smiled. "Come on then, I'm ready to go."

"Good," Nick said curtly. "Stephen?"

The younger man just nodded in agreement.

* * *

Outside, Becker noticed, the weather continued to grow decisively nastier, especially for the last week of spring. The sky was now totally overcast, and the wind continued to blow strong and cool – much stronger and cooler than this morning's weather prediction for the day.

Meanwhile the team – his 'charges', so to speak – were also apparently a bit under the weather. The younger women, Abby and Caroline, were sort of glaring at each other, while Connor Temple looked as if he would rather be anywhere else but with them. Among the older generation, Nick Cutter too was giving Stephen Hart a rather glaring look that was promptly ignored, while Jenny Lewis looked as if she would rather be doing anything else instead of going to the time anomaly site. In short, it was a far cry from the efficient, co-operative team of the time when Becker had come to it, and the Secret Service man just didn't like it. Efficient, co-operative teams just don't break up like that because-

At that moment a cell phone rang; after a brief exchange of glances it was determined that the phone was Caroline's. "Who is it?" she snapped into it.

"Oh, it's you, Quinn. Just whom I needed."

"What? Wait, let me get you an expert on these things-" she turned and thrust it straight to Connor. "I think it's more of your thing."

"What?" Connor asked cautiously, expecting more bad things. He was right, actually, just not in the way he was actually expecting to be. "A what? A giant bear? You sure?" By then the rest of the ARC's field agents had grouped around him and listened carefully. "Well, did you see it yourself? I mean, 'general bearness' isn't as much of a guideline to go along as you would think-" he paused. "The man had hanged up on me."

"Connor," Nick said slowly, "what did the man say?"

"Apparently, the hospital has been invaded by brown grizzly bear or something," Connor grimaced. "Not exactly helpful, is it?"

"Connor?"

"Yes, Nick?"

"Next time, hand it over to me instead. Abby, Stephen – think we have enough tranquilizers to handle a bear?"

Stephen nodded, but Abby hesitated. "Nick," she said quietly, "a bear is hard to bring down. You got to get it first to stand up, and then you have to shoot at the chest, 'cause the skull is just mostly bone – not good for the tranquilizer darts at all."

"You mean, the head isn't good enough," Connor said slowly, "and also Quinn said it eating a calf or something, so getting it into a standing position will be tricking."

"We got dogs," Nick said slowly, "I think we can count on them into getting the bear into the right position, am I correct?"

"Mmm-hmm," Caroline nodded thoughtfully. "This is going to be much trickier than the cat, though."

There was a pause as everyone just looked at Jenny Lewis, as if expecting her to say something as well. The latter, upon realizing that, shivered from the admittedly cold wind, and then said, reluctantly:

"Well, I guess that _that's_ settled, so let's go?"

There was another pause, and Nick Cutter frowned in concern. "Jenny – is something bothering you?"

"Well, actually, Nick... it's not something that I can't handle, so let's go now, already!" Jenny flatly commanded, as she climbed into the car. The others exchanged looks of mutual confusion before remembering that they had their own issues to deal with, and quietly got into their own vehicles, which then drove off, leaving Becker – as he rode in his own vehicle – to wonder just what was going on here... and why was Helen Cutter – the strange woman with some stranger acquaintances – coming along with them?

* * *

The rides in Caroline's van were always quiet, but this time...it was even more so than usual, and Connor, who never liked silence to begin with, decided to break it instead. "So, Stephen," he asked his friend carefully, why Helen has gone with us?"

"Why shouldn't she?" Stephen replied just as carefully. "As Nick is aware by now, she's not that dangerous than she appears...and this morning we had a talk...I think she's trying something new – helping us with the time anomalies, that is."

"Well, great for her!" Abby's voice indicated that she couldn't care any less for Helen or for Nick. Connor, however, decided to ignore her for a change, and continued to talk to Stephen.

"Yes, well, one would think that Jenny would try to object at least. I mean, yes, Helen had helped her with the orthocone, and she probably had helped us with the museum incident, but-"

"But nothing," Stephen shook his head. "It was Nick's call in the long run, and he made it. Moreover, Jenny... she seems to be preoccupied with something else, something just as personal, I think."

"You think that it's about her family, maybe?" Connor bravely went on. "'Cause, you know, this morning Abby and me-"

"Connor!" Abby literally barked. "Don't drag me into this!"

"Anyways," Connor bravely continued, "I was wondering – how's your family?"

Stephen paused, clearly thinking. "Honestly? Not very good. My family, it's just... so very conventional, you know? I really don't think that they would really like you all... they always thought that I should do something else than palaeontology."

"Yeah, like breed dogs as Caroline does," Abby said scornfully.

"And yet you find a need for my dogs to deal with a prehistoric bear," Caroline clearly had metaphorically risen to the challenge. "How's that for dramatic irony, mmm?"

Connor gulped. The last time Caroline had used this tone of voice was at the disaster of Nick's birthday, when the two young women were ready to fight it out then and there just because they didn't like each other. And now, after all that they all have been through together – Leek, Ordovician orthocones and sea scorpions, Pliocene prehistoric beasts and some sort of the alternate reality dinosauroids, they were back from where they have started – hating each other's guts, and not even because of him this time.

Abruptly, Caroline stopped her van flat, startling the others. "Stephen," she said quietly, "is it normal to be snowing so late in May? ...Is it normal for foxes to walk around the city streets in broad daylight? Because both of these facts are taking place outside my car as of right now."

There was a pause as the others looked outside. The suddenly fallen snow was seen right away, the fox (a red fox) took longer until Caroline point it out as the animal sniffed the pavement at the left side of the car.

Abby, upon seeing the fox, immediately climbed out of the car – but stayed near it all the same. To her – and the others' – surprise, the smallish animal showed no intimidation or fear regarding her and other humans, unlike any wild animal that Abby and others had ever seen.

Suddenly, the pavement of the street clanged with the sound of many hoofed legs stomping down on it, and the fox jumped into the car – to avoid getting trampled on, just in case. Abby, however, had hesitated, and so she was able to see the megaloceros herd in all of its glory, underneath the gently falling snow.

"Oh crap," Stephen muttered weakly. "Caroline, call Nick – I think we can guess now from where did the giant bear had come from."

* * *

As time went and the London scenery changed around the moving vehicles, Jenny Lewis grew more and more worried. Throughout the week, she had been torn between what she wanted to do – well, actually that was very simple: she wanted to take Nick out to dinner since obviously no initiative in that direction was going to come from him – and when she had finally decided to do something specific, her family's life history was rising up with a vengeance; and to make matters worse, the weather was acting up: it was actually snowing-

"Snowing? Nick – it's snowing in May!" Jenny suddenly exclaimed. "It's – it's-"

"It's the anomaly," Helen said slowly. "I think I know now to which time period it links, yes."

At that moment Jenny's cell phone rang, and Connor spoke on the other end. "Nick," Jenny said at the end of Connor's little speech, "it's Connor. He called and says that he and the others are being delayed by a herd of Irish elk. He says that the Irish elk have lived-"

"Jenny. The time anomaly opens to the Ice Age... Europe, most likely," Nick interrupted her. "This means... this means that the bear that Connor had heard on his phone call earlier was not am American short-faced bear as I have feared, but the relatively smaller and less aggressive European cave bear. Jenny, what are you doing?"

"Connor had also given me Quinn's phone number. I'm dialling him right now to find out how things are at the hospital," Jenny gulped. "As in – has anyone been hurt by the escape deer or the bear or whatever."

"Good idea," Nick nodded and took-up Becker's walkie-talkie. "Captain, how are things at your end?"

* * *

"They are magnificent," Abby whispered quietly as she and the other three just stared at the giant deer that looked back at her with big, apparently mild, eyes. Abby, however, having worked at the zoo for quite a while now, knew better – despite their gentle or majestic appearance, a deer could easily be deadly with its hooves and horns: the biggest deer, elk and moose, could easily fight off and even kill wolves and brown bears, and the megaloceros looked even bigger and stronger than those animals.

"Guys," Abby said with a sign and shiver, as the weather had gotten colder and darker, "we got to do something about them. We cannot dawdle here... but we cannot just charge them – it would be a disaster."

"I know," Stephen nodded – some of Abby's files had been on animal-car collisions. Neither he nor Caroline doubted that should they charge the megaloceros herd, the resulting damage would be disastrous to both sides. "Fortunately, I have an idea. Abby, Connor, get in the car – if it works I don't want to dawdle. The weather is getting worse by the minute, and if it turns into a real blizzard or an ice storm, we might be stuck for good."

Abby and Connor climbed back into the car. The fox glanced at them and turned back to its' smelling session with Michael, Caroline's prize dog. Although the Brazilian mastiff was considerably bigger and heavier than the wild canine, it and the fox seemed to be on quite the friendly terms.

Of course, Abby belatedly remembered as she stole a glance at the two animals, Michael had been trained to defend, fight and kill – the dog could finish the fox probably before it could even realize that something was wrong, just like its' mistress, who apparently could change tactics at a drop of a hat.

"Ready?" Stephen asked the aforementioned mistress.

Caroline nodded, her grip at the steering wheel stiffening further.

"Then here goes nothing!" and Stephen hit the stereo button. Instantly the re-fitted car speakers resonated once more with the battle-cry of the ARC's mammoth. The effect on the deer was instantaneous – as swiftly as any of their smaller modern kin they whirled around and fled from the direction they came, with the car following suit at a reasonably high speed.

* * *

"Well, Connor just called – again," Jenny said as she herself was driven by Nick with Helen sitting well behind them. "The deer have left – they have scared them off with the mammoth's recording and now they're moving once again."

"Good for them!" Nick grinned with pride and respect. Though he wasn't specializing in the Pleistocene megafauna unlike Connor, he knew that the megaloceros had lived side by side with the woolly mammoth, a relative of the ARC's own animal. Though the two animals were quite different species, the similarities of their challenging calls were similar enough for any smaller creatures to get as far away from them as possible whenever they heard it – no one wanted to be trampled or tossed away by an angry and impatient mammoth.

Behind him, Helen smiled as well at these thoughts, with no less pride and admiration than Nick himself, albeit for slightly different reasons – but Nick either didn't notice her or just didn't care. And Jenny Lewis was already busy contacting Quinn once again.

"Mr. – right, detective-constable – Quinn, how are things on your end. Any more deer have come through? Oh, you meant to call us. How nice. Have the warm blankets and what-not been issued to the victims and the rest? Glad to hear it. We're almost there."

Something soft and fuzzy was thrust at her cheek. She half-turned and saw Helen thrust a thick scarf, definitely of modern make, also definitely not bought at a second-hand thrift store, at her face. A matching scarf was already tied around the other woman's neck, and Nick now sported a furry cap with ear flaps, which made him look rather silly. Still, warm clothing was warm clothing, and Jenny gave the other woman an appreciating grin as she tied the scarf around her own neck and turned back to see as to where they were arriving.

The sight that greeted her had killed that smile completely dead.

* * *

"Well! Here's a sight one doesn't see every day!" Connor exhaled as they looked at one of West London's mental institutions. "And for a good reason, too!"

"Shut up, Connor," muttered Abby, but her heart wasn't in it, her bad temper spent and weakened too much by the sight of the giant deer and by the ride in the pleasantly warmed van. The sight of the big Brazilian mastiff lying peacefully and equably side by side with the much smaller fox didn't help her bad mood either; in short, right now Abby was feeling rather spent...and the sight of the mental institution just made her depressed further.

"Look – Nick and others are already there," Connor continued, "and he must've gotten a new hat. I swear, he almost looks like a troll in one of the earlier RPG games that I and my mates used to play-"

"Connor! Get out of the car!" Abby barked as she did just that. "Caroline – are the dogs ready?"

"Yes," echoed the other woman as she summoned her pets with whistles, "they're ready... oh boy."

"What?"

"Michael's new friend decided to come along so you ought to handle it," Caroline snapped as she pointed to the fox that trotted alongside the dogs, looking wary yet curious at the same time.

"Oh!" was all that Abby said as she carefully picked up the smaller animal. The fox gave Abby a curious look, but since they were still moving in the same direction it didn't try to bite Abby or wiggle away and instead just played along, sort of.

"Well now, isn't this cozy," a new, unfamiliar, and yet somehow familiar voice spoke up suddenly.

Slowly, both the animals and humans stiffened and turned around – the newcomer sounded somewhat rather crazy.

Given the fact that they were standing before a messed-up mental institution, this was never good.

* * *

There were several – well, not so much perks as abilities that developed when you travelled in time – literally speaking. And, although they were nowhere near as powerful as Melinoe's had been, Helen knew that she was powerful enough – still or yet or whatever. She still had certain foresight, and as such she had foreknowledge and was forewarned.

As she strode towards an opening, made by the herd of the Irish elk, she heard two pairs of footsteps. Nick and Jenny Lewis. Naturally.

"And where are you going, Helen?" Nick spoke, slipping into his trademark accented exasperation.

"Oh, just over there," Helen said calmly, remembering that now aggravating Nick was a bad thing. "There's someone that we have to meet."

"We _have_ to meet?" Nick repeated sceptically. "You mean like... those two yesterday?"

"Oh no!" Helen didn't even thought to fake what she thought about Melinoe and Iymrith. "This one... he isn't that bad – he's just crazy."

"_He_?" Jenny Lewis spoke in a tiny little voice. "You don't mean – you can't –"

"For what's little that it is worth, I'm sorry," Helen said quietly. "But some things in your life are just unavoidable."

And then Jonas Lewis appeared on the scene.

* * *

For a moment Nick just couldn't figure out where he had seen such a madman – barefooted, dressed in remains of a straightjacket of all things, with greyish dishevelled hair on his head and in his moustache – and then he realized that the face behind the hair, the bone structure under the skin and behind the crazy eyes was actually very, very familiar – it was the face, the bone structure of the ARC's own PR agent, gender-bent.

Right now, though, this aforementioned PR agent was trembling like a leaf and trying her best to hide behind Nick or her scarf – whichever would work best in hiding her.

"Well, isn't this cozy – my own grand-niece is in such company," Jonas Lewis ground, as he ignored the falling English temperature and the cold and rough pavement underneath his feet. "Hello Jenny, glad to see you actually making it on time, though I wouldn't say the same for your company..."

Since Jenny was still hiding behind them and trying to make herself appear as small and inconspicuous as possible, Nick turned to Helen – after all, she was the saner one out of the two. "You know him?" he asked, trying to keep disgust out of his voice – after all, this man was apparently related to Jenny.

"Yes," Helen herself sounded partly exasperated and partly disgusted. "Jonas Lewis – Jenny's great-uncle had, what at the turn of the 20th century, was called a delicate psychological nature – or something like that. Once upon a time, he found a time anomaly and went through it, and had a mental breakdown, and died one million years in the past. Let's call this world Claudia-world, shall we? Now, after a certain misadventure with the future predators and gorgonopsids, I went back to that moment and prevented him from going through it. As a result, his mental breakdown took place here, he's been put into an appropriate institution, he lived for a long time...and instead of Claudia you have Jenny – a 50% different version... at most!"

"You mean without you he would have been dead and gone?" Jenny finally spoke up.

"Gone for a million years now," Helen nodded.

"Yes, yes, I would have been gone! I would have been free! But now – I have a second chance! I'll be free again! I'll be me again! I will be able to kill again!" Jonas put his (unwanted) two-bits in, as he jumped up and down on the spot in a rather unholy glee.

"Jonas," Helen kept her half-exasperated half-disgusted voice, "I agree that travelling back through time can have a rejuvenating effect on the body, but that is it. You may become young again, but this is a totally different time anomaly, leading to a very different place – not to Pliocene South America, you can believe it-"

"No! No!" Jonas shouted. "No more interferences, you witch! It's time for me to be me!"

He whirled around and ran into the messed-up mental hospital, presumably to the time anomaly. There was a deep, grunting sound like that of a pig – a really big pig, and Helen froze. "Oh no," she muttered "it just got worse. People – don't move!"

The next moment Jonas was flung back outside, hurt and bleeding, following by the woolly rhino that had done the actual hurting.

* * *

"Holy crap!" Connor whispered to Stephen. "This would be so cool if it wasn't going to hurt us!"

Stephen had to agree that Connor had a point. The rhino was covered in thick wool of various shades of reddish-brown colour from legs to the middle of its back, from the tip of its tail up to ears. The muzzle itself was much less furry and much lighter in colour and sprouted a pair of horns, just like the modern African rhinos, rather than a single horn like the Asian species. Yet, regardless of the similarities, one more thing really stood out about these horns – they were really, really flat like sabres, not cone-like like the modern rhinos' horns. But other than that and the wool, the Ice Age rhino seemed to be pretty much like the modern animals – big yet low-slung, near-sighted yet with a great senses of hearing and smell. And right now it smelt Caroline's dogs – and it didn't like it.

In an almost complete silence, the rhino began to hoof the ground and lower its head in a preparation to charge – and Caroline released the dogs' leashes, and the smaller animals instantly scattered apart, surrounding the rhino in a circle, ready to launch a counterattack. The rhino whirled around, trying to keep head first to the attacking animals, but the dogs constantly shifted, aiming for the not-as-formidable hindside and flanks. It was an impasse, and it got broken... by the recorded call of the ARC's mammoth.

Even though Becker, and Nick, and Jenny, and – well, all of the rest of ARC's field agents would later interrogate Becker's men regarding the identity of the doer, the man would remain unidentified – and that was good, because Becker and others, from Abby to James Lester to Stephen and the rest were ready to court-martial the unlucky sod for his actions:

The recorded mammoth's challenging cry caused the woolly rhino to attack instead.

* * *

It was amazing, really, in a rather painfully and deadly way. One moment the woolly rhinoceros was just whirled around, trying to pinpoint a single dog out of the pack at which to charge at, and the next moment it _did_ charge – straight at the direction of the mammoth's recorded cry. Only the car from which the recorded cry had resounded was quite a bit lighter and shorter than a Columbian mammoth, and when the rhinoceros had charged and gored it – the machine was flung away after being toppled onto its' side, leaving skid marks and stench of burning rubber and what-not on the institution's driveway.

The dogs burst into angry barks, as they besieged and bit the bigger beast on all the sides (except for the front, of course), trying to lead it back closer to the building. Michael, as one of the biggest (and probably an unofficial leader due to Caroline's training anyways) managed to get so close enough to the woolly rhinoceros to bite it deeply in one of the ears – and the rhinoceros squealed almost like an oversized pig and whirled around, but Michael had jumped safely away from the dangerous horn...

Of course, the dogs weren't the only ones who took on the rambunctious rhino: Becker's men too had began to fire, but the animal's heavy fur, hard skin and thick layer of fat beneath it created a natural armour thick enough to take on the tranquilizer darts without any effect on the animal's behaviour... plus the men were afraid to shoot the dogs on accident: if one of them got hurt, then somehow – none of them doubted – Caroline wouldn't hesitate to criticize this sort of approach with her shotgun or whatever. Thus, the darts weren't coming as plentifully as they should have.

A sharp whistle suddenly broke that situation: Nick Cutter managed to manoeuvre himself between the prehistoric animal and the hole in the institution's hallway, and caught its' attention. Well, he actually tried to, but the animal reacted on the first go and charged straight at him – only to have Nick jump away just before its' horns. The rhinoceros, admittedly, tried to rotate, but Stephen by that time had his hands on Caroline's shotgun and discharged a load of rock salt from both barrels. If the rhinoceros had had any thoughts of whirling around and doing another run, the direct hit of rock salt had changed its' mind for good: with (rather porcine) squeals the woolly rhinoceros fled back into the Ice Age world.

Nick wiped sweat of his forehead, and glared at the rest of his people:

"Whose idea was it, to scare the rhinoceros with the challenge of one of its' main competitors, hmm?"

"Jenny, grand-niece Jenny," came a sudden, gasping, wheezing response.

* * *

There was a pause before Nick (and possibly others) realized that Jonas was not confessing his grand-niece of doing the daft deed, but rather talking to her directly, oblivious to the recent confrontation with the prehistoric rhinoceros or even his own wound. "Jenny, grand-niece Jenny," he muttered as he grasped his much-younger relative by her upper arms, "listen to me carefully. In that place, that sick and twisted metal place, lies an opportunity, a golden opportunity! It is a pathway to great strength, to freedom, to immortality! Twice I have been denied this, by that witch who stands behind you! Don't let her deny you as well! You're of my blood, Jenny, you're a Lewis! Seize the throat, seize the day!"

"Great-uncle Jonas, you're not quite yourself, you're too excited," Jenny tried to calm her relative down, but he wouldn't listen to her, growing more and more enthusiastic by moment.

"Don't give me that talk, Jenny, you know that I am sane! There's an entire new world, an entire fresh new world out there for the taking! You're of my blood, Jenny, you're a Lewis! Seize the throat, seize the day!"

Jenny was never particularly cowardly – she had, after all faced everything from primeval worms, to Ice Age rhinoceros, to Leek and his minions, but the sight of her great-uncle, his hair standing at an end and his eyes rolling wildly in their sockets was disturbing all the same.

"I think that that's enough, sir," Nick decided to intervene and grasped the older man's arms. Jonas shifted his gaze towards him, and the sight of those eyes convinced Nick that the older man clearly had a mental and nervous for a long time now.

"You, you – voodoo man, hoodoo man," Jonas wheezed, as he released Jenny and began to turn to Nick clearly with non-peaceful intent. "You, you-" Suddenly he stiffened and stared at someone, or rather something, behind Nick's back.

The herd of Irish elks came back.

* * *

As far as numbers went, Abby would later realize, the herd of the Irish elks wasn't particularly numerous – more than six but far less than twenty, which was the number of the herd of fallow deer in the zoo. Yet, as individually each of those animals was quite bigger and more massive than any fallow deer, it all evened out in the long run.

Meanwhile, the animals just looked around, nonchalantly standing and waving their heads, except for the stag of the herd, whose antlers were far too big and heavy for such undertaking. Suddenly, the animals took a collective sniff of the air, stiffened, and quickly trotted into the hole in the institution's doorway, vanishing there.

"What the-?" Abby muttered, as Caroline's dogs just began to howl.

"I think they have smelt death," Stephen sighed, as Nick realized that Jonas Lewis had died just in his arms, and couldn't help but drop him in hurry back on the cold street with a thump.

"Well!" Helen spoke up for the first time since they got to the time anomaly's site as she looked down at the deceased man. "Here, but the matter of time go I!"

"Excuse me," Danny Quinn chose this moment to come up to the live trio and one corpse, "but I just wanted to tell you that the bear has kind of left around the time that the rhinoceros came out. I think that the bigger animal had scared him into leaving or something."

"Well then! This only leaves the fox!" Helen said, turning to the younger field agents of the ARC, one of which, namely Abby, held a fox in her arms. "Is it going or staying?"

"I'll ask," Nick sighed and left Jenny and Helen on their own with detective-constable Danny Quinn.

"Jenny," Helen clearly had something of her own to say, "I want to tell you something."

* * *

"What?" Jenny turned to the other woman, not knowing exactly what to expect from her – their relationship as such was practically non-existent. "What do you want?"

"Almost a hundred years ago from this day, I have interfered in your family life," Helen said softly. "I did it – well, the reasons were irrelevant, they were selfish. I kept this colourful character in your family life, and thus have changed you – from inside, and the outside... well, you did that yourself, after a while. Since I am trying to make amends, well, I can amend that-"

Jenny shook her head. "No, no, please don't. Thanks, but I will figure the way out of this myself-" She paused. "Just for the record, can you do what you have done at the museum?"

"Yes, but this is the last time," Helen nodded slowly. "Next time when a time anomaly opens, you'll be the one doing damage control – from a public relations standpoint, of course."

"Of course," Jenny nodded, calming down, and paused. "Now what about that fox?"

* * *

"Abby – what about the fox?" Stephen asked sternly as the smallish animal was sitting promptly at Abby's feet, looking with innocence and curiosity. "You're going to carry it back into the time anomaly or what?"

"Well, probably – Connor and I cannot keep it at our house straightaway – what if it eats Rex or something?" Abby argued, but her heart wasn't quite in it.

"Well, maybe Caroline would loan us a spot at her kennels-"

"But she won't-"

"Sure I will – with a price equal to that of a dog of its' size," Caroline intervened with a slight eye roll. "Provided that you'll start caring for it as soon as possible, there won't be any problems-"

Meanwhile, Michael, the big Brazilian mastiff and now a veteran of the battle with the woolly rhinoceros, trotted over to his mistress and her... well, the dog didn't care what they were because they weren't enemies. And so, Michael trotted over to them and looked at the fox. The fox looked back at the dog and licked its' nose. Then it emitted a short bark, got onto its feet and quickly trotted into the depths of the ruined mental institution.

"Well," Connor blinked, "that was unexpected. Is it gone?"

"Yes, it is," Helen had trotted over to them in her soft, non-noticeable manner. "Now hold onto your hats, ladies and gentlemen, because this is going to be a bright one!"

The next moment the air itself appeared to have been lit with the chromatically white light of a time anomaly – this was a bright one indeed!

* * *

"I don't believe it – they did the second time now!" James Lester groaned as he looked at his static-infested TV. "Capturing, or whatever, of Helen Cutter, was supposed to make things easier and simpler, not keep them the same! Well, at least no strange new characters from her other life seemed to have make an appearance, so it balances out, somewhat. Still, those reports will better be some really good ones indeed!"

"Sir?"

"What is it, Lorraine?"

"Christine Johnson has come to speak to you in person."

"What?!"

* * *

"Well, that was different from the time at the museum," Jenny exclaimed some time later, as they were driving back from the mental institution. "Not to mention the sensation-"

"Don't get too excited," Helen said flatly. "This is the last time I'm doing this, as I have said earlier. Not unless the world is coming to an end literally or something like that."

"Fair enough," Nick began to speak, when Jenny spoke up.

"Nick – um. As you've seen, my great-uncle has died."

"Yes," Nick felt an extreme desire to wash his hands – again.

"Since – um, Nick would you come with me to his funeral? I, uh, don't really know anyone else as important to invite- to ask-"

"I don't have anything appropriate for such an occasion," Nick said slowly.

"What about-?" Jenny indicated Helen with a nod of her head.

"He never believed that I was dead, which I wasn't, so no sombre clothing," Helen shrugged. "Guess he'll have to buy it brand new."

"Oh, I can help with _that_," something rather unholy came into Jenny's eyes. "What do you say, Nick? Shall we go shopping tomorrow?"

"Yes," Nick nodded while looking to Helen for help. The anthropologist turned time traveller had turned away to look at the car's window and not noticed that.

"Oh good!" Jenny almost squealed with glee, save for the shade of her recently deceased relative that kind of cast a gloomy pallor over all.

But not as gloomy as some moments ago, not at all.

* * *

The drive in Caroline's car, conversely, was much more silent, as the driver and her passengers kept to themselves for a change, even Connor, as none of them wanted to talk this time. It wasn't that the memories were too raw – they were too recent and jumbled up as well, the personalities involved were too up and personal for them just to be satisfied with each other, and so, when the big van arrived at the driveway of the ARC, the situation was as bad in a different way as the one when they have left – and the fact that there were now some strange people in the Center didn't help matters either-

"Lester!" you didn't need to have some super-sensitive hearing to realize that the speaker was rather angry. "What's the meaning of this? It's twice now that your people have somehow messed up the city's TV and radio programs and waves and I don't know what else! Is this your idea-"

"It's not!" Lester's voice was protesting, oddly defensive. "In fact, professor Cutter has phoned me and told me very determinedly, that this is absolutely the last time it happens!"

"That man of yours is no better than you're yourself-"

A very loud and unexpected sound interrupted the stranger's monologue. Then there was a series of thuds – and a smell.

"Abby," Caroline grimaced as the dogs whined and retreated from the smell, "I think that that mammoth of yours has just farted and knocked Lester out with it."

Abby and Connor blanched.

* * *

"Ah, you're all back – _all_ of you," James Lester glared, as he pressed a handkerchief to his nose with one hand and used the other to comb his hair. "So answer me this question – do you plan on destroying our news at such a high speed?"

"No – not unless the world is falling apart and it's the time of the second coming," Helen shrugged and looked down at Christine Johnson. "Shouldn't someone wake her up or something?"

"In a moment," Lester nodded, as a canny look came into his eyes – and froze. "What's with Ms. Lewis? Has someone died?"

"My great-uncle," Jenny nodded. "The funeral is next week."

"Oh. Well," Lester faltered, but then made a gamely attempt of recovering. "Anyways, do not wake Ms. Johnson just yet. She-" he paused. "I have a plan of how to take advantage on this state, and for the record, someone call a veterinary to see the mammoth. That kind of smell is just plain wrong!"

"Of course it is," Helen shrugged. "It's not a modern elephant; it's not supposed to eat, say, carrots and beets."

"Well, what it's supposed to eat? Grasses?" Abby glared at the older woman.

"Yes, and also such fruits as the Osage-oranges and honey locust and conifer needles," Helen shrugged. "It's an American animal – it doesn't function in Europe all that well."

"Yes, well as fascinating as that is," James Lester interrupted the talking women, "we have a different issue to deal with. Ms. Steele, I believe you wanted job security?"

"Does it mean that you're hiring me full time? Fine, but if you try to cheat me, I am so taking you to court that it won't even be fine," Caroline shrugged and left in the direction of the kennels.

"James – just how will you be able to afford this?" Jenny asked.

James Lester grinned. "I plan to take advantages of Johnson's current state – that's how. The woman was driving me to tearing out my hair about her complains," his lips pursed. "She thinks that she is all that – but she's not!"

"Lester-"

"Look," Lester snapped, "between Ms. Steele's ultimatums, your own individual little demands, and even the damn mammoth, I've been backed into a financial corner, and now that I have a stone that just may be able to kill all of those birds at once! So if you don't mind-" he helped the still dizzy and semi-conscious Christine Johnson onto her feet and led her in the direction of his office with nary a word.

Silence followed.

"I really hope that Lester knows that what he is doing," was all that Nick Cutter said.

_To be continued..._


	5. Chapter 5

**The Other Way**

**Chapter 4**

Nick Cutter awoke in a foul mood – he hadn't had such bad dreams ever since Connor and Stephen had persuaded him to see the latest instalment in the Star Wars™ trilogy. For some reason for the rest of that week had ended up having nightmares in which Helen, dressed up in the Darth Vader's getup, complete with a light sabre, approached him, promising to finish him, namely Obi-Nick Kenobi – that did not make Nick's temper any better.

Now, however, Helen had not invaded Nick's dreams, but the dream-memory of a rampaging woolly rhinoceros, with a horn almost as long as Nick himself and very sharp, was just as bad – the damn animal had been playing for keeps, and he and the others were lucky that no one got hurt...

...except for Jonas Lewis, whose funeral he will be attending, but for now – buying mourning clothes with Jenny, the deceased man's great-grand-niece... For the first time since he first met her (Jenny per se, Claudia didn't count), Nick realized that Jenny was not quite just a face (Claudia's face) any more, but neither she was quite a person to him yet – something had to be done...

It was at that moment that Nick heard a knocking on his front door – and looking in that direction, he saw the aforementioned Jenny Lewis, perky and ready to start their shopping enterprise. Well, relatively perky, for Nick was sure that there was a look in her eyes that implied that she didn't have a good night's sleep either. Still...

"So, Nick, are you going to let me in or what?" Jenny said lightly.

"Sorry – I guess I was just thinking about you," Nick answered truthfully before he could fully realize what he was saying – and was rewarded with a distinct, bright blush on Jenny's face.

...she really looked very cute whenever she blushed like that.

* * *

"Good morning, Abby – you're up and early as I can see," Connor stated to his flat-mate/part-time girlfriend. "Are there any sausages left for me and Rex?"

"Connor, we have a small problem," Abby replied, ignoring Connor's traditional question of their last few months. "Jack is coming to town."

Connor blinked. "Who's Jack?"

"My brother," Abby explained guiltily. "He needs a place to stay, and since I'm family..." Abby paused and joined Connor in looking at Rex.

"So what if you're family? What if you have a personal life of your own?"

"But I don't! You and I, we-"

"And whose fault is that?"

"Connor – you _want_ me to throw you out after such a question?"

"...I'll be good. Back to Jack. What are we going to do?"

"Well, I was thinking of asking Stephen to house him for a few days but now that he apparently got a personal life of his own-"

There was a pause as the pair tried to mentally picture Stephen's personal life. The resulting image was unappetizing, to say the least. "...Maybe we can push Rex onto him instead?" Connor said, after trying – in vain – to clear his head from the pictures of Stephen and Helen. "How about that?"

For some reason, Abby gave him a funny look. "Right. Let's get to the ARC and talk to him first."

The rest of the morning – including breakfast – was done without any banter at all.

* * *

Caroline Steele was sitting next to Michael, her big Brazilian mastiff of a dog and eating some cheesecake when James Lester, now her full-time boss, decided to approach her at that moment, sadly unaware that no one should get between the younger woman and her cheesecake. Admittedly, Lester didn't know that, but Caroline intended to rectify it for him.

"Boss man," she said calmly, while thrusting her plastic fork partway at Lester's face. "Once upon a time Oliver Leek had stuck his nose into what was I was eating as well. I told him to leave, or else I was going to feed him to Michael, starting with the eyes that I was going to pry out of their sockets with this plastic fork – do you get the drift of my story, or should I start showing instead of telling?"

"You know," Lester said after a brief pause as he moved away from the eating woman: the fork may've been plastic, but the big dog looked strong enough to his eyes and the rest of his face with just one bite, "most of my employees don't tend to threaten me with bodily hurt so blatantly, preferring to attack my character or ego or something along those lines instead."

"Does it work?"

Lester just gave the younger adult a look that was blithely ignored, as Caroline re-started eating her cheesecake.

"Does what work?"

Lester turned around. "Oh, it's you two! And where're Cutter and Lewis?"

"Shopping for mourning clothes for the funeral," Abby sighed. "Where's Stephen?"

"With everyone else, looking over your invention," Caroline replied instead, pointing her fork to Connor for a change. "Why are you asking?"

"We need to house Rex for some time this week," Abby replied shiftily. "Think Stephen will agree to it?"

"I don't know – I think he just might, because his personal life is mostly over here nowadays anyway," Caroline shrugged, as she once more resumed eating the cheesecake. "'Course, I'm not sure how your pet will handle a lonely apartment all to itself."

Abby and Connor glared at Caroline as if she had said something gross...which she had, sort of. "Caroline-" she began, but never finished, as the time anomaly alarm had sounded once again.

* * *

To Abby and Connor's surprise, when they got to the main alarm station in the Center, Stephen and Captain Becker were accompanied not just by Helen Cutter, but Sarah Page as well.

"Stephen," Connor hurriedly said, "where're Nick and Jenny?"

"Still shopping – with Jenny's cell phone turned off; Nick never had any for a start," Stephen explained blithely. "Still, I suspect that once they'll hear the news, they'll come phoning and driving."

"Where to?" asked Lester curtly, as he had come as well on heels of the younger adults. "Surely not at another institution?"

"Far from it – at the Heathrow airport, as a matter of fact," Stephen replied just as curtly as he switched the screen from map to visual. "Sorry about the lack of sound, incidentally."

"Nah, it's my fault – the anomaly alarm just kills it, due to wires crossing," Connor explained calmly, and then froze. "Abby, do you see what I see?"

What Connor saw was essentially a herd of giant, oversized elephants, each one easily twice as tall as the woolly rhinoceros that had attacked them from the last time anomaly, grazing among the aircraft, almost pushing them out of the way – and the most worrying thing was that to Connor and the rest, such an elephant was a common, almost daily sight –

- It was the Anomaly Research Center's "mascot mammoth".

* * *

The silence as that realization had hit was finally broken by Helen. "Well," she said slowly, "I think I'll make an educated guess about the time and place. The place is North America, most likely the Western half; the time may be as recent as 13 thousand years or as ancient as 70 thousand."

"That's a spread of _57 thousand years_!" Lester exclaimed angrily. "That's 5.7 millennia! And the _Western_ half?"

"In the Eastern half lived a somewhat smaller subspecies," Helen shrugged. "By smaller I mean roughly 30 centimetres shorter than this one, height-wise."

One of the mammoths on the detector's screen chose the moment to trumpet: though the sound was still dead, the sight of the curling tusks pointing straight at the camera was still very impressive. "30 centimetres shorter than this one," Lester said with his sarcasm somewhat lacking as compared to his usual, but still present, "how nice that we can all deal with a problem so numerically."

"Here's another number. An individual mammoth needs roughly quarter of a ton of food per day. That's grasses, leaves, occasional fruit or conifer," Helen looked back. "The Center can support a single mammoth, not an entire herd."

"You think? And quarter of a ton? Our animal eats slightly more than just a half of that amount," Lester glared.

"And so it does. That is called malnourishment, Lester."

"Time out," Becker hurriedly intervened before the numerical discussion about hairless mammoths could spiral any further out of control. "Earlier, we've used the mammoth's recorded cry to scare off some giant deer – well, Stephen Hart and his friends did – and before that the mammoth managed to scare off the other prehistoric elephant beast."

"The deinothere," Connor nodded sagely.

"Whatever. Can we use the mammoth for the third time and see if we cannot scare the newcomers into going back from whenever they came from?"

"Becker – our mammoth is a member of that same species, or a closely-related one. Odds are, it will want to go back with them," Connor said quietly.

"And the problem with that would be-?" Lester said flatly.

Abby just glared at him. So did Connor.

"What the-?" Caroline suddenly exclaimed. The others looked at the screen – and saw that it went dark.

"Something knocked the camera out," Caroline exclaimed. "Maybe it was just one of the mammoths got too uppity at the cameraman or vice versa, but can we go now?"

The others just looked once again at the darkened screen and then at each other. "We're taking the mammoth with us," Becker stated with more conviction than he felt. "Whether it stays or goes – we'll probably need it once we're there, correct?"

"Sir?" one of Lester's aides looked down from an upper tier of the ARC. "Christine Johnson has called – again. She says that she'll be here within 40 minutes and that she'll have some choice words about you personally as well."

"Take out the damn mammoth now!" Lester shouted. "You'll probably save on gas as well!"

"She will be probably on a warpath in any way," Caroline added quietly – but as quietly as it was said, it had broken the metaphysical camel's back.

"Fine! We'll take the mammoth!" Abby snapped loudly. "But remember – you owe us. Connor, come on!"

Caroline muttered sarcastic under her breath; Helen rolled her eyes, Connor flushed from embarrassment – but no one actually protested to the angry blonde – and so they went to get the mammoth.

* * *

Shopping with Jenny – or Helen, or his mother (or never mind _that_), or any other woman – was not exactly an experience that Nick Cutter fancied to experience often: it was about as painful as beta-reading one of Connor's online fictions, something along the line of the masterpiece 'And the young man remembered that many a sorcerer's apprentice had finished their career as an armchair, or a coat-rack, or an especially phlegmatic dog.' Moreover, when Nick asked if Connor meant 'pragmatic' rather than 'phlegmatic', they had a rather animated argument, more animated than either of them expected to have over a beta-reading of an online fiction – but that wasn't the point.

The point here was by now that Nick began to feel rather like that coat-rack in Connor's fiction: being an enthusiastic clothes shopper, Jenny constantly flitted across stores, finding one black suit after another, determined that Nick tried out each and every one of them in a fitting room.

Nick, admittedly, wasn't totally clueless regarding dealing with demanding women (out of bed): he very quickly decided on one of these suits and adhered to it, period. Jenny wasn't deterred. After black suits came various accessories, than even more bargains – and suddenly Nick found himself rather burdened with various bags of purchases, while Jenny pranced in the front with a single purse: a far different way of spending an afternoon from what Nick was used to do.

And yet Nick had to admit that this was an improvement – well, sort of – over his regular routine, which consisted of a quiet tea-time in his university office by himself or with his co-workers or Stephen, or, alternatively, a very noisy time in which he avoided being bitted, clawed, gore, stung, etc., by various beasts from beyond the mists of time in either prehistoric or futuristic direction; moreover, a very large portion of that improvement consisted of Jenny.

And yet, Jenny's shopping spree was something else again. "Jenny," Nick said quietly to his female companion, "do you want to take a break?"

Jenny paused, turned around, saw the Starbucks™ outlet that Nick had noticed, and nodded in agreement.

* * *

"So, Connor, what do you know about mammoths?" Stephen asked the other man as the latter looked wistfully outside the car where Abby was busy riding the ARC's mammoth, leading it towards Heathrow at a steady pace.

The younger man seemingly ignored Stephen's question, so Caroline took one hand of the steering wheel and snapped the fingers.

"**Woof!**" Michael barked loudly, startling Connor back into general awareness:

"What, what?"

"Mammoths, Connor. What do you know about them?"

"Why are you asking me? You studied with Nick longer-"

"Yes, dinosaurs. You're the one writing a thesis paper on the Ice Age Megafauna. Spill."

"Oh, well, I am not much into mammoths – I'm writing sloths, you know: Nothrotheriops, Eremotherium, Megatherium..."

"Connor," Stephen's voice brooked no argument, "you've talked about mammoths as well – you certainly told Abby all those little facts about the trunk muscles and so on. Spill."

"Can't you ask Helen about it instead?"

"Connor? Spill."

Connor sighed, clearly unimpressed about Stephen's diplomacy but began to speak nonetheless.

"The mammoths were probably like modern elephants, to which they were closely related. Or are, seeing how some of them have made a sudden guest appearance in our time and place. Anyways, the female mammoths formed herds lead by the eldest female; the males lived separately, and thought herds out only in the mating period. The mammoths were actively hunted by ancient humans and so the odds are is that these mammoths do not like people as a rule."

"Our mammoth is letting Abby ride on it, and has befriended us very quickly," Stephen nodded.

"So do wild elephants – well, the Asian specie anyways. The African elephant was never tamed – you know, to the point of performing circus acts or manual labour like the Asian elephants do. With the mammoths... well, it could go either way... but in a complete herd the odds are against us rather than for, especially if we are to try and force them to leave our time and space."

"Well, Abby told me that you used elephant pheromones on our original mammoth. Maybe we can do something similar this time as well."

Connor looked shifty. "Just don't tell Nick _or_ Abby, but back then...I think the mammoth was not so much following the pheromones as trying to catch Nick and kill him. Mammoths were reputed to be clever and unpredictable, just like elephants, and in Africa, the local elephant species are among the five animal species that are the most deadly to humans... I doubt that this will be any easier if we were dealing with, say, deinotheres: they were as big as our mammoth but a whole lot less smart." He paused and looked thoughtfully at Caroline. "You know, I expected you to raise a fuss by this point, claiming that this isn't your place or anything like that-"

"Except that Lester had put me onto a full-time position, so it is, unfortunately," Caroline said flatly. "Now back to the mammoths."

Connor turned red. "What more do you two want? I wasn't able to see them alive – well, alive and properly in the wild that is. Stephen – it's your job to figure out how to handle prehistoric animals in Nick's absence anyways! You have any ideas besides the whole elephant pheromone thing?"

"Maybe," it was Stephen's turn to look shifty and thoughtfully. "Caroline, you don't know any small aircraft pilots around here, do you?"

"No," a note of curiosity briefly flashed in Caroline's voice. "I do not. Maybe Becker does?"

"Maybe..."

* * *

Becker was not a man inclined much to self-criticisms: rather, he tended to follow the orders of others, mainly his superiors in the chain of command, which do not leave much space for self-criticisms or similar inclinations, but now that chain was exactly the problem: Nick Cutter wasn't present, and neither was Jenny Lewis, the people who handled most of the big decisions and made the chief choices, as far as Becker was concerned. Stephen Hart was present, of course, but from what Becker had seen, the latter too preferred to follow Nick's directions rather than to challenge them. Helen Cutter, conversely, seemed to do exactly the latter – challenge her ex-husband, but somehow Becker doubted that that made her prime leader material for _this_ team... and that left... well, that left nobody in particular, and the last thing Becker wanted was leadership squabbles, especially when they were about to face a herd of angry, or at least unpredictable, mammoths with just a mammoth of their own and, probably, Helen Cutter's extraordinary skills when it came to time anomalies.

Becker snuck a look at the aforementioned Helen Cutter. So far, the time-travelling woman was busy in keeping company Sarah Page in observing Abby Maitland riding the ARC's mammoth – at this point she didn't look very competent or intimidating or extraordinary either.

Suddenly Helen stopped looking at the mammoth and Abby and gave Becker a very wry, pointed, knowing look that hinted that she was onto him after all – well, maybe just to some extent, not completely – but onto him all the same.

"So," she asked carefully, "do you have a plan?"

"We herd the mammoths back into the time anomaly and you close it?"

"No," Helen shook her head. "The time with the institution was the last. Now you'll have to put your trust into Connor Temple's invention instead – you showed it to us this morning, remember?"

Becker turned red. This morning he indeed showed Helen, alongside Sarah and Stephen, Connor's latest development in inventing time-anomaly-managing devices. But the catch here was that Becker himself was rather sceptical about that latest invention of Connor's...it just looked so very, very incomplete and wrong... Admittedly, he had never expressed his doubts outloud to Stephen and the women because Stephen, at least, was a good friend of Connor's and could have, possibly, taken such a comment wrongly, and-

"You haven't," Helen stated flatly. "Oh boy... I suggest that you send some of your men back to the ARC and bring it to the airport – carefully. Otherwise, well... let me put it to you thusly, captain – have you ever been at the clean-up duty of mammoth dung?"

"Mammoth dung," Becker stated while his face developed an expression that could make one think that Helen had just spat into his soul. "Clean-up duty."

"Mmm-hmm. The only ones worse than mammoths and other extinct elephants are the big grass-eating dinosaurs," Helen said calmly. "Therefore, be so kind and tell your men-"

"I'll think about it," Becker cut her off curtly.

"Very well then," Helen shrugged and leaned back onto her seat, silent once again. The look on her face was worrying – it clearly implied that she knew something that Becker didn't – and he didn't like that.

"Uh, what are you two arguing about?" Sarah Page had stopped starring at and photographing Abby on the mammoth and turned her attention to the other two people in the car.

"We're just criticizing the ARC's cafeteria food, especially spaghetti," Helen said wryly. "Want to join?"

"That spaghetti should be just trashed as soon as it is cooked – that Caroline Steele woman tends to bring her own lunches and I cannot blame her. Admittedly, that spaghetti is the worst, but-"

As Sarah and Helen started a lively, animated diet about the dubious values of the ARC's cafeteria meals, Becker just sighed – he suddenly realized why Nick never mentioned his ex-wife in a fond tone of voice, no matter what.

* * *

"So Jenny, who is going to come?" Nick asked after waiting for an allotted period of time and realizing that Jenny will rather drink coffee than talk business.

"What? Oh, um, is it important..." Jenny trailed off. "Right. Well, my parents, for once."

"And they are?" For some reason Nick didn't feel too enthused about meeting Jenny's parents on such an occasion.

"Oh! They are James and Jemima- what?"

"I'm sorry – James?"

"Oh, we – I am not related to Lester in any way, really," Jenny said quickly. "My family lives in Oxfordshire; actually, I am the first one to move back to London or to work in the PR service..."

"Back to your parents?"

"Right! Dad teaches classical mythology, mom – British literature...and from the look on your face I guess I should elaborate a bit more?"

Nick nodded.

"All right then. Due to various familial politics back in the past, some time before or during WWI my family moved to Oxford, where my grandfather Jason got tenure and met my grandmother, Jenny – I got named after her. Later, my father was born, met my mother, married her – and I was born. And then, well," Jenny paused. "Look, it's not that I don't love my parents – it's just that we had nothing in common: neither an outlook in life, or priority values, or tastes in reading or clothing, or-"

"I got it, right. How did... Jonas tie into it?"

"He was an estranged member of my family, or so I remember my grandfather tell me," Jenny said sadly. "Well, maybe estranged wasn't the right term for him, because, well, it's not estrangement, but rather-"

"Yes, I know," Nick said sadly. "I was there too. So, the funeral?"

"In about five days from now, here in London," Jenny said miserably. "My... our late... relative wasn't very popular around here, you know? We'd rather have him buried here than back in Oxford..."

"Right. And what about any time anomalies, and your job – our jobs, I supposed?"

"I got it all under control, really," Jenny said slowly. "If I'll need help, I'll tell you, honestly."

Nick just nodded and re-started drinking his coffee, clearly seeing his doubts reflecting in Jenny's eyes – and what pretty eyes they were!

No, in spending one's afternoon with Jenny Lewis, as opposed to spending it with other people (even, probably, Stephen), was a much better thing.

And then-

* * *

Ever since that fateful night that had brought the time anomalies into their lives, Stephen Hart had seen plenty of horrors, from the giant carnivorous gorgonopsid, as big as a rhino and even bloodthirstier, to the future predators that seemed almost homicidal in their hunting urges, to primeval Silurian scorpions – and beyond. Yet the herd of mammoths was something else yet again.

The animals were huge, though fortunately only two or three of them were actually up to the full 4 meters of height – the rest were slightly smaller, but even these smaller specimens were bigger than most cars at the ARC's disposal. Besides the general size, the more specific size of the tusks was a factor as well: they were massive; they were long; they were a great supply of ivory; and they could be very easily used as weaponry, powered by the huge beasts that possessed them. In short, this was nature at its' finest... and it was worried.

More correctly, the mammoths were concerned: the adult animals kept the calves close to them and didn't permit them to wander away. Clearly there was something else in the neighbourhood, and it wasn't people.

"Clearly, something is bothering these mammoths – you know, besides the fact that they're not really supposed to be here," Connor said slowly, "oh, and Stephen? Helen keeps pointing a finger at us from her vehicle."

Stephen and Caroline exchanged looks, then Stephen looked at Helen, who, along with Becker and Sarah Page were to their right while Caroline looked at her dog that kept staring to their left. Then the pair exchanged another look and stared to their left as well.

Connor joined them in a moment and gaped: approaching them, in all of its' lethal glory, was a massive sabre-tooth cat. It was somewhat shorter than the animal that had been raised by Valerie, a mentally disturbed (and deceased) park ranger, and its hide wasn't spotted like a jaguar's, but resembled the colour of the Brazilian mastiff, just more brightly tan than the much-lighter animal; but otherwise than that it was pretty much a sabre-tooth cat, one of the most lethal prehistoric predators of the mammalian kingdom. And right now, they were the only ones between it and Abby with her mammoth, as the pair finally appeared on the scene – and stared opposing the mammoth herd.

* * *

As far as Abby was concerned, time had frozen, or at least slowed down to a snail's pace, as the ARC's mammoth finally smelled and saw and heard the other mammoths. The huge animal just stopped and stared, trumpeting softly at them. The other mammoths responded in kind, until of the bigger animals stepped forth, emitting a much louder cry.

The ARC's mammoth stiffened, carefully took Abby down with its' dexterous trunk, and then, emitting the loudness of its own trumpeting, began to advance against the other animal, looking as strong and determined as twelve dozen bulldozers all compressed into one single Columbian mammoth.

Surprisingly, but perhaps not unexpectedly, Abby felt a surge of pride towards the ARC's animal – but then she heard some sort of commotion to her left, and took a look. On that flank, things weren't progressing very smoothly at all.

* * *

For Caroline Steele to grab her 10-gauge shotgun and Michael and emerge from her car first was an undertaking definitely out of character. The fact that Stephen and Connor followed her suit didn't change the OOC quality of the fact – of course once Caroline ordered her dog to heel and locked the load on her shotgun, the situation became clearer somewhat.

"Don't you dare!" Stephen grasped Caroline by her upper arm and snapped at her ear. "We do not kill animals just like that, in cold blood!"

"Then what is the plan, oh fearless leader?" Caroline glared at Stephen with a look that would probably stun an anaconda at 70 paces. "We stun it and drag over to the time anomaly?"

"Won't work, most likely," Connor shook his head. "The other smilodon, the one that we caught live and was later stolen by Leek, it probably weighted quarter of a ton – me, Abby, Stephen and Nick were barely able to drag it off from the dead ranger," he paused. "This one may be somewhat smaller, but it probably just as heavy."

"So? You have something more constructive?" By now Becker and his men too had gotten out of their vehicles and were spreading out, both towards the mammoths and the smilodon.

"Well-" Connor didn't finish, as the very loud noises from behind them caused him to falter. He half-turned around and snuck a look. The ARC's mammoth was apparently slightly overwhelmed by its opponent, but still it refused to flee: it dug in, and pushed back with all of its strength.

"Michael! Voice!"

Caroline's big Brazilian mastiff broke into a low growl, which was echoed by the smilodon. Despite the fact that the smilodon was bigger and heavier than the dog, Michael slowly began to advance – just one or two steps forwards – towards the bigger animal.

"Caroline- What are you doing?"

"She's serving as a distraction," Becker answered instead. "There's a man up in that tree, see?"

Connor frowned and tried to see the latter... "You're right! But-"

"We're launching a diversion now," Caroline explained flatly, "while Sarah Page will try to get him via a car-"

A very loud thump from the background stopped Becker's statement. Connor whirled around: the ARC's mammoth, though it broke one tusk in the process, was literally able to fling away its' opponent, and now the other mammoth fled, trumpeting in defeat, back through the time anomaly. As Connor (and Abby from her position) watched, the ARC's mammoth, ignoring the humans completely, literally trotted over to the herd, emitting victory cries to the general agreement of the other animals.

A sudden sound caused Connor to switch his attention back to the smilodon: the Brazilian mastiff had finally launched a charge. The prehistoric predator responded with a swipe of one of its' paws, but the smaller animal, dodging under the blow that would otherwise knock it out cold and bleeding, bit into the sabre-tooth cat's throat. The latter reared back, ready to slam both of its forepaws into the dog's body, but the tranquilizer darts whizzed through the air, hitting the smilodon in the upper body – and the smilodon toppled backwards, as Michael released its' bite and quickly raced back to Caroline, clearly happy to be out of the battle.

"Uh-" Connor began to speak, but Helen interrupted him:

"For your information, Connor Temple – oh, look, is it Nick and Jenny Lewis?"

Everybody just stared in that direction (except for Sarah Page, who by now was helping the smildon's victim to get down from his perch).

* * *

Several hours ago, Nick and Jenny were still sitting at the Starbucks™, sipping coffee with Danishes, when Jenny finally decided to check her cell phone for messages. There were only two of them – one from James, the other from Stephen – and both said that there was an emergency at Heathrow and their presence was required there immediately. That certainly killed the previous mood dead, and their pair had rushed to their car and to the airport as fast as they could – but were too late. The time anomaly was still wide open, the last of the mammoth herd was slowly vanishing in it, and the rest of the ARC field agents, were busy staring at a tranquilized sabre-tooth cat.

"What's going on here?" Nick asked, quieter than his usual style, as he became painfully aware just how much he had probably missed.

"We're wrapping this thing up, Nick, before another herd of mammoths decides to make this their grazing ground," Stephen said rather angrily, as he and the others continued to pull the unconscious predator towards the time anomaly. "Jenny – Sarah is talking to a rescued reporter or something, can you talk to him to double-check?"

"I think I will do just that," Jenny said, looking at the still-open time anomaly. "What are the chances of something else coming through it?"

At that moment several members of Becker's forces _and_ the ARC's field agents just paused and gave Jenny a LOOK. Nick, regrettably, was one of that number as well.

"Right, silly question," Jenny said quickly and trotted off to join Sarah Page and her interlocutor. Nick, meanwhile, joined the others dragging the smilodon up to the time anomaly. The damn cat was as heavy as the last smilodon that they had to handle in the past, but this time there were more people to share the load, so it was being carried back to the time anomaly more quickly.

As the group approached, the time anomaly loomed. It was big and it opened a door into another world, a world of grassy valleys and copse-covered hills, where mammoths were roaming and a cloud of dust was rapidly approaching the chronological hole.

"Oh no," Helen groaned as she saw the dust cloud. "I saw this thing before – it's a bison stampede."

There was a pause, as everyone took realization of Helen's last sentence, and then the still-unconscious sabre-tooth cat was thrown through the time anomaly with all the due haste. The dust cloud was still mostly on the line of the horizon when the various workers of the ARC grabbed the cat and pulled into the time anomaly – and then it closed.

* * *

"This is an outrage! A freedom of the press!" Michael Harper raged as he stalked back and forth before Sarah Page, shaking one of his fingers in an authoritative way. "Twice already there have been almost city-wide disturbances, and both times the government had covered it up in such a wide-scale way that it staggers me just imagining that it could do something a terrible as that! If there'll be a third time-"

"Ms. Lewis?" Sarah Page finally found enough courage to interrupt the indignant reporter, "glad to see you back. How was your shopping?"

"Rather good, considering it all, considering the upcoming event, considering the emergency," Jenny shrugged, unwilling to go into greater details just for the moment and turned her attention to Sarah's interlocutor. "Have we met before, sir?"

"Yes, we have. Remember that highway disturbance? You told me that there was a mammoth behind it, and now-" Michael Harper swept his hand, intending to indicate the new mammoth herd and froze, as he realized that everything prehistoric has vanished into thin air. "Just what are you people? Escapees from J. Rowling's novels?"

"The truth can be stranger than any fiction," Jenny said with certainty, "and if you're finished harassing my co-worker, we'll be leaving now."

"You shall not escape from the public eye forever!" Michael Harper shouted angrily. "I shall discover the truth and set it free!"

* * *

"What a nimrod," Sarah confessed some time later to Jenny and Nick, as she rode back in their vehicle for a change. "He got flanked by a sabre-tooth cat or whatever it's called, survived to tell the tale and still was indignant. I mean, I'm not particularly happy about Helen's actions, however, she did them, but that man can certainly talk. He got so carried away that he missed the whole thing. So, how was your shopping?"

"In generally, an enjoyable experience," Nick said shiftily. "Besides the mammoth and the smilodon, were there any other animals that had come through?"

"None that were in the vicinity, and besides, I think that what we took is called a calculated risk, and by 'we' I mean mostly them, because _I_ was mostly dealing with Mr. Harper of the ITV at that time."

"Fair enough," Jenny exhaled, "and where there any emergencies?"

"None, but the Center's mammoth had left with the rest of the animals," Sarah shrugged. "I think that Abby Maitland is kind of sad about it."

"Oh," was all that the other two people could really say, because what else can you say about a now-departed mammoth. "Well, I'm sure that she'll get... over it?" Jenny said lamely. "We really must-" she paused. "Whose are these cars at the ARC's entrance? That can be bad."

It was.

* * *

Out of all the things the ARC had experienced, a prolonged and notorious harangue of James Lester, its chief official and head of command (in theory, anyways) was not one of them. Consequently, the dressing-down (or a tearing of a new hole) of the aforementioned James Lester was something new and unexpected for sure.

"...and the society for preventing cruelty to animals!" Christine Johnson was thundering, as she sandwiched James Lester between herself and her cohort, a shorter, much darker woman in a high-ranking police uniform. "What were you feeding it, beans?"

"Now that, madam, is none of your business," James Lester snapped back, and then turned towards the returned ARC crew and Co. "Professor Cutter, Ms. Lewis, glad to see you back in the saddle."

"Lester, you're aware that we'll be leaving again within a week?" Jenny sighed, not particularly happy to meet Christine Johnson and Co., yet not willing to bale Lester out of problems of his own making either. "For a family funeral too, you know?"

"Oh yes, I remember. How was- wait, aren't you missing something?"

"Our missing mascot had rejoined his kind," Caroline Steele said flatly, "that possibility was hanging in the air, remember?"

"How big was the damage?" Christine Johnson immediately asked, whirling back towards Lester, "and don't give me that look – I have already experienced and met it, so to say, last time I was here."

"Maybe so," James Lester glared doggedly back, but I still have to disagree and disavow any potential right that you have-"

"Child?" Christine Johnson's uniform-clad cohort spoke for the first time since Nick and the others have returned to the ARC. "You have something to tell him?"

"Oh very well," Caroline Johnson sighed, as she walked over in a semi-confrontational, semi-embarrassed poise. "Everybody, the woman on my right is Officer Steele, my mother. The woman on my left is Ms. Christine Johnson, my _other_ mother. Oh, and the man over there is James Lester, my now full-time boss whose innate cunning and trickery has yesterday made it personal. Other mother?"

"Mr. Lester," Christine Johnson smiled so widely that everyone half-expected her to bite-off James Lester's head then and there, "seeing how we're _almost_ family, I and my family expect you as our guest this Saturday at eleven A.M., if you don't mind."

"I hate you," James Lester responded instead to Caroline Steele, who just shrugged and stuck her cheesecake almost into his nose:

"Cheesecake?"

* * *

"Helen – we need to talk."

"I know, Stephen. You want to start?"

Stephen paused, then sat down next to his – well, he wasn't sure exactly who Helen was to him, but she was his anyways, as possessive and unlikely as it sounded. "Did you know about our dog trainer's family situation?"

Helen paused, clearly torn between several options of response and then spoke, sounding rather afraid, for once in her relationship with the younger man before her. "Yes, I did," she admitted, almost flinching from the truth, "but I didn't think it was important at that time – I thought that if everything works as planned this detail will not be relevant."

"Yes, well, it's relevant now," Stephen exhaled with a rush. "Lester, he – well, Nick thinks that he can be a real person rather than an aggravating... character, but, well, who's to say that that Johnson woman isn't? Plus she seems to have a tendency to go into overdrive, and-"

"For now, Lester's position is safe," Helen shook her head. "Christine Johnson finds it convenient and acceptable for her child to work there – providing that Caroline Steele remembers where her loyalties lie."

"And where do they lie?"

"You'll have to ask her that yourself," Helen shook her head. "If you want, I or Becker can back you up in case of the dog."

"Fine," Stephen said after a brief hesitation. "Let's strike the iron while it's hot – let's go and talk to her."

* * *

"Ah, Caroline, what are you doing here-"

"Setting in the dogs for the night." Caroline turned around and gave Connor a sideways look. "Where's your other half?"

"What, you mean Abby? She's talking to Sarah if the latter is willing to house Rex while Abby's brother is visiting, that is staying with us... Don't try to skirt from the question!"

"You never asked it."

"Oh. Right. Well, how'd that happen?"

"What happen?"

"That!"

"That? That happened in the same way as this happened, and by 'this', I mean _you_."

Connor turned red. "Not _that_ – well, that also, but I meant in a more broad meaning of it!"

"Ah," Caroline took away her smirk and grew serious once more. "Well, as I explained to James Lester and Jenny Lewis some time ago, it all started when I was approached by Oliver Leek and hired to be your girlfriend."

Connor winced. "Don't you think that 'hired' is a wrong word?"

"Fine, I was employed by him to be your girlfriend. Since my other mother is a government official _and_ the name of James Lester has been surfacing few times during family meetings, I wasn't too surprised, but," Caroline lowered her voice and looked conspiratively at Connor, "but never before was it used with such amount of venom as last night, after the mammoth incident. Lester had made it personal, and this weekend, my folks will probably tear him a new one – again."

"Can't you help?" Connor mechanically asked.

"Uh-uh. Now it's not about me, now it's personal," Caroline repeated what she said before. "And my family can really bring personal to a new level, myself included – that's why with you two it was pretty much strictly business."

"Sure," Connor said flatly, "business."

"'Cause if it wasn't, I'd have to bring you to my folks – think you would've been able to handle them?"

Connor thought about it, and paled. "No," he admitted finally, "not really. Well, uh, thanks for your time." He left. As he did, he ran into Stephen, who was apparently also walking in that direction...

* * *

It was getting dark. The sun was setting in the west, and the capitol city of England was not busy being overrun by hordes of mammoths, or sabre-tooth cats, or even giant short-faced bears, so apparently the latest ARC emergency has been dealt with after all.

Nick and Jenny were busy once again with clothing, though this time Nick was doing most of the sitting and Jenny most of demonstrating. The mourning colour theme of the clothing made this occasion appear rather morbid, but for once Nick didn't think of complaining – after finishing several reports to Lester and receiving several earfuls about his own character, he was more than ready to spend time with anyone else, especially Jenny...

Several blocks down to the south, Abby and Connor were busy in inviting Jack in, casting somewhat cross, sideways glances at each other – obviously, Rex's absence was more influential on them than they would have thought, plus latest revelations had also confused even further their opinions on family and on each other, and... Jack was in for a rather tense, uncomfortable evening that night...

And so were Stephen and Helen, as the two finally got a chance to go to Stephen's flat and talk-out without getting eavesdropped by Lester, or get distracted by Becker courting Sarah in a rather wild, overblown and enthusiastic way. But there was plenty of talking, explanations and even some chronological demonstrations from Helen that night...

...and the next morning, the sun rose again, bringing forth a new day.

_To be continued..._


	6. Chapter 6

**The other way**

**Chapter 5**

Several thousand years ago... the island of New Zealand was lush and green, as the Maori people hadn't yet have enough time to run it into the ground via their own, undersized, version of civilization – rather similar to the one used by the Europeans many, many millennia ago, so for now many prehistoric New Zealand birds and other animals (there were hardly any native New Zealand mammals) still had no second thoughts about scurrying or fluttering through the undergrowth, from the cat-sized kiwi bird to the smaller (well, relatively smaller) species of moa, each creature pursuing its own business – eating, drinking, urinating, mating, sleeping or the like. And yet, one of those bipedal creatures was not a bird but a human, and yet to one of the birds, the human appeared to be not a predator, but prey, as a huge Haast's eagle, the biggest and most dangerous bird of prey that the world had ever seen, was stalking a creature – the human – that seemed quite similar to its' regular prey, the moa, with every intention of killing and eating it.

The young man was apparently unaware of the giant bird; instead, he seemed to be searching for something closer to the surface of the ground than a giant bird. In fact, as he repetitiously rubbed his forehead and twitched his head, one could easily assume that he wasn't feeling well – and wouldn't be that far off of the mark...

Suddenly, the young man stiffened. Underneath the lanky and curly black hair a rather nasty-looking grin appeared on his face. "There we go, there it is-" and sprinted away much faster than before, catching the eagle flat-footed, so to speak.

Yet, naturally, the big bird had no intention of losing its' potential meal. It took off as well, shifting forwards to seize and pierce the fleeing man – only to have a time anomaly flash upon before them, catching the bird unawares yet again...

* * *

Sometimes, James Lester mused, it just didn't seem to be worth the effort to get out of bed and go to work – if it won't be the routine that'll kill you by shear boredom, then it'll be the unexpected surprises...or Christine Johnson, personally commanding the firing squad.

Christine Johnson... James Lester could clearly remember her feud with him – it all had started because he was, well, a man, and the PM thought that he would do a better job heading the ARC...

Oh, whom was he kidding? Cutter and his people pretty much did what they wanted, including insulting him in the face, and _Helen_ Cutter's surrender was little better – Lester just couldn't shake away the feeling that the time-travelling woman was staying here because she wanted, not because she was forced, or because of Becker's guarding skills.

At the thought of Becker, James Lester could only grimace. So far, the man's best attributes were... well, Sarah Page probably had a better knowledge of them, but it wasn't exactly what he had in mind when he took Becker on...

Oh, he was self-deluding himself again! The PM had pretty much thrust Becker onto him without much room for discussion, and James Lester knew that this wasn't open for discussion, not unless he wanted to waste his time and have nothing concrete for his efforts-

So, why was Christine Johnson so interested in the ARC? As much as it pained him to admit it, but her career was far more in the main track than his; there was no reason for her to get so personally involved in it – well, _initially_ speaking, for after the ARC's now-gone mammoth had farted on her, things have certainly changed, but-

Suddenly, Lester froze. Leek was certainly dead and rotting (hooray for small miracles, ha-ha), but at least one of his compatriots was quite alive and hearty, and well – and she was Helen Cutter. So, then, perhaps, it was to talk to the lady doctor after all.

A sudden phone call broke James Lester's train of thought. "Yes?" he spoke abruptly into the phone receiver, then immediately stiffened. "Yes, Mr. Prime Minister, yes I see. Of course, of course, I am on it immediately!"

* * *

If there was one person that Becker found more aggravating than Nick Cutter and the latter's loose-handed approach to leadership, it was Lester and his high-handed approach to it. Therefore, when the phone rang and the identification apparatus revealed James Lester's phone number, Becker graciously let Connor handle it, even though the latter shot the military man a nasty glare.

"Mr. Lester, you're calling early – what?" Connor frantically turned back to the time anomaly detection center and began to type something on the keyboard. "There _weren't_ any time anomalies – whoa, wait a sec! There was one, but it was just a blip – it lasted only for few moments!.. Yes sir, I admit that that's no excuse, yes we'll be right on it-" he hanged up and turned to Becker and others. "People, we may have screwed up."

There was a pause and then several of Connor's co-workers stared at him. "What do you mean?" Becker growled, seeing how at least Abby Maitland was looking as angry as he had felt. "What Lester said-?"

"There was a time anomaly opening earlier this morning – only for few seconds, so my detector simply didn't have time to react fully and properly to it," Connor explained, "and now there's some sort of a giant bird or pterosaur flying all around London. We better go and capture it before it does any serious damage."

"Yeah, and we still have the mammoth's pen available for hosting any reasonably large prehistoric creatures," Abby said glumly, then took a head count and frowned. "Um, where's our designated driver?"

"Um," Sarah instinctively echoed Abby's opening, "she had called earlier and said that there was a real family emergency and that she would be coming late, if at all. She sounded really miserable about it too, so..." she trailed away.

"And you were distracted by Becker – we remember," Abby said crossly. "I guess this is shaping to be a day when nothing goes right. Connor, let's go and catch the damned pterosaur or whatever before it flies into the Windsor palace or something."

Abby was half-right. Today was a day when nothing went right for quite a long while.

* * *

Today was shaping to be a day that nothing went right, Jenny Lewis mused as she sat in a bar with Nick and kept a careful eye on Stephen and Helen, as the other pair...kept a careful eye at the entrance of ARC. For a conspiracy fan, Helen is certainly an amateur, no matter how talented she thinks she is... well, maybe 'conspiracy fan' wasn't the right term to describe the other woman-

At that moment things began to move at last. First, several cars left from the ARC – the usual assembly, signifying that a time anomaly had opened somewhere in the city...although Jenny thought that something had been missing from the group, but at the same time – well just a bit later, really - James Lester drove _into_ the ARC, and Helen finally 'sprung into action', after telling something to Stephen first. Upon seeing this Nick immediately got up, ready to confront Stephen (and things would've gone a bit differently on this morning), when something else happened: the ARC got invaded by a cavalcade of cars with two somewhat familiar looking people in the lead.

"Okay," Jenny exchanged a look with her part-time boyfriend. "That wasn't expected."

* * *

"Lorraine – let me get this straight. Stephen took his woman from here to his place yesterday and they haven't come back yet?"

"Yes sir."

"Jenny Lewis took Nick Cutter with her at around the same time for some more pre-mourning shopping and hadn't checked in this morning either?"

"Yes sir."

"Any other crap I should be prepared to deal with on this morn?"

"Well, sir, Captain Becker took Sarah Page to your office last night, and there were... noises."

"I didn't mean _that_ kind of crap, Lorraine. Send some people up into my office to sterilize it, then make sure that the expenses come out of the pay checks of that couple of-"

CRASH!

Lester and Co. Slowly turned around, to see Christine Johnson and her much more quieter cohort enter the ARC building once again, this time back by a group of-

"Johnson," Lester finally said, "why are you here now, with a group of armed-" he froze, as his eyes finally caught up to his brain and his brain caught up to his mouth and he finally fully realized that the two women were backed up by several dozen of humanoid lizards, or dinosauroids, or some similar creatures.

"Lester," Christine Johnson smiled back, smiling too widely with teeth that were just of a wrong shape to be a human smile. "I believe that this is the time when we say good-bye to you – and good riddance-"

"Oh dear me dear, this won't do at all," another feminine voice sounded from behind Lester, and suddenly an arm slipped around one of his own – and both of these features belonged to Helen Cutter. "You see, James Lester here has an appointment with _me_ at this time, and Ms. Johnson, you and your kind will not deny me that, would you?"

Christine Johnson's face underwent some severe distortion; it looked far less human that James Lester would have liked to see so close in personal. Then the other governmental official emitted a series of sounds, all "s" and "r" and "k" intermixed with one another.

"Good, glad to hear that," Helen Cutter's voice was still quite friendly, but the friendliness of the prime minister and his cohorts had nothing on it. There was something underneath the topmost moderately thick layer of that friendliness that Lester never wanted to meet face-on.

A slight meeping sound from behind him reminded him of Lorraine's presence on the floor. "You!" he told her curtly, "go into my office and lock the door – a designated number-one hostage or not, the invaders look quite unfriendly!"

Now one of Christine Johnson's saurian troops leaned forwards and emitted a series of sounds. "Hmm?" Helen said, also leaning forwards and meeting the humanoid eye to eye. "You're making me _late_?" Her grip on Lester's arm tightened slightly, while the other hand stretched forwards, and maybe it was just a trick of light, but something began to shimmer at her outstretched hand.

Johnson and her force jumped to the sides far quicker than Lester expected them to. From the sounds behind him, Lorraine also took it as a cue to move and go to his office as well.

"We're leaving now," Helen said in a voice that brooked no argument, and that's exactly what they did.

* * *

"This is getting nowhere fast!" Nick told Jenny as he finally got up off his seat, determined to finally confront Stephen. "This is the second – or the third – time that Helen got Stephen involved in her ploys, and this time I-"

"Excuse me," a polite, masculine voice spoke from the other side of the pair's table, "but I believe that I'll be killing you now."

There was a pause and then both Nick and Jenny slowly turned around. The speaker was obviously male, apparently of Stephen's age or even slightly younger, and smiling in a way that reminded the pair of the late Jonas Lewis, albeit much, much younger.

"What, with your bare hands?" Nick asked, his mouth faster than his brain for once.

"Perhaps," his interlocutor nodded, rolling back his sleeves to reveal arms corded with muscle, which terminated in hands that had fingers that resembled meat hooks wrapped in fingerless gloves. "But I think I'll just shoot you instead."

"Why? Who are you working for? Christine Johnson?" Nick decided to try the less likely (in his opinion anyways) option, and when the young man nodded in affirmation, he was caught rather flat-footed by that fact.

Jenny, however, wasn't. "Why?" she said quietly. "Why has she hired you to do this?"

"Because she considers you dangerous to her plans – in fact, she considers your whole crew dangerous, so I am going to kill you," the young man shrugged, with a sing-song tone in his voice. "Shall be fun _and_ challenging, mm-hmm."

"Then how about giving us, say, twenty minutes of head start?" Helen Cutter had silently appeared from behind the trio of talkers. "How about that, young man? For old times sakes?"

"Hello to you too, ma'am," the youngster nodded amicably, his scarred forehead partially visible through all the curly hair in his forehead. "How's your megalomania going?"

"It's getting better," Helen said nonchalantly. "And your homicidal urges?"

"I've got a grip on them," the would-be murderer smiled wildly, his teeth being in a slightly wrong shape for a human. "I'll be killing them now."

"And what about my request?" Helen cocked her head sideways and stared the young man right in the eye. "Hmm?"

The young man smiled even wider – far too wide for a human mouth to be able to smile. "Very well, madam, I agree – for now. Good luck on your therapy!" he turned around and walked away.

Immediately all joviality dropped from Helen's face. "Nick, Jenny," she said slowly, "we're leaving _now_."

"In what? Oh," Nick fell silent as a rather familiar big metallic-grey van drove up to them.

"Quickly, too."

* * *

The van, Nick quickly realized as he and the two women got into it, belonged to Caroline Steele, whose mother was the same-sex partner of Christine Johnson, who apparently had hired a rather crazy-looking hit man to deal with them. The sight of the aforementioned Caroline, sitting in the back of her van for a change, in company of her big dog and the 10-gauge shotgun, didn't improve his mood any.

"What's she doing here?" he snapped angrily, as he looked and noticed James Lester sitting in a seat across from him.

"We met her this morning and asked her to make a decision – something that she tends to loathe, but yet..." Helen shrugged, "decided to surrender she did. Now we probably should contact Connor Temple and the rest in order to forewarn them, no?"

"Already on it," Jenny said quickly, "there aren't any bugs in it?" she paused.

"No," Caroline said quietly from her place in the back, "we're... we're not really interested in you – we just want you not to interfere, hence the big bird story earlier today."

"While you do what? Conquer Britain?" Lester snapped.

"Yes," Caroline nodded. "It's the most likely probability – at least initially. Later on, once we were to settle here and grow roots, we would probably cut in the other clans for the rest of the world."

James Lester opened his mouth, but Jenny interrupted him:

"And you're telling us this because-?"

"I have no idea," Caroline lapsed back into silence, which was naturally filled by Lester.

"This is ridiculous!" he exploded. "The girl's mad – madder than her mothers and their lizard circus!"

"James Lester," Caroline said slowly, "look at me."

Lester looked. So did Nick and Jenny. They weren't disappointed: Caroline's lower jaw unhinged far lower than human jaw physically could and she emitted a deeply guttural growl right into James Lester's face before snapping her mouth shut with an audible click.

"What- what are you?" the official sputtered, but Helen Cutter answered instead:

"One of the settlers from the future, from the predators' future, to be exact. Only, unlike them, she's much more humane and civilized by now – just like her parents."

"From the future," Nick echoed, as he turned back to face his probably-to-be-ex-wife. "And her mouth is shaped like this because?"

"To crack enemy skulls and swallow their brains," Caroline answered from the back, "but do not worry – teleost fish work just as fine."

There was a profound silence in the van after that.

* * *

"This is one of those days, isn't it?" Connor Temple profoundly whined as he and the rest of the ARC field crew and Co. were sitting in a small cafe having a break. "We have wheeled all over the city, spent dozens of pounds worth of gas money, probably wore down most of the tires, and no sign of our missing monster! This just, just blows!"

"Oh, shut up!" Abby said crossly, when her cell phone rang. "Hey, it's Jenny!" she eagerly pressed the talk button. "Jenny, what's up?"

"No, the ARC hasn't contacted us since Lester sent us on this chase this morning."

"Say what?"

"Caroline is a what?"

"There's what after us?"

"We should go where? Oh, there. Why? Oh, all right. We're going there!"

Abby snapped the cell phone shut and turned to her companions, who were staring at her with a mixture of concern and curiosity. "People, get into your vehicles now!"

"What's going on?" Becker snapped.

"Captain, I'll explain on the way. Connor – it's apparently as what has happened with Oliver Leek, only worse."

Connor swore.

* * *

"Just for the record," Helen Cutter said in an almost conversational tone of voice, "the young man isn't mine, nor can I control him. All that the two of us have is some sort of mutual friendship, coloured with a lot of mutual caution, and even I don't know how long that will last."

"Maybe," Jenny nodded in agreement, "but that explanation had to do in a pinch. Who was that colourful character, anyways?"

"A fellow time traveller – albeit a relatively younger one, who has allied himself with Christine Johnson and her force," Helen said. "Since he was homicidal since before he found his first time anomaly I shudder to think what depths he has reached now."

"Is there something that you're not telling us, Helen?" Nick frowned. Helen exchanged a look with Stephen (who was driving) and then turned back to Nick.

"Time travelling is a great way to broaden your horizons, Nick, but... it took me a very short time to achieve a severe superiority complex or something even worse," she grimaced. "As a result of it, Stephen died, you died, I died, many other people died, Jenny ended up a lonely and broken-up old maid... so I realized that something had to be done differently – make that everything."

"And yet you're alive," Jenny growled, who did not appreciate Helen's description of herself.

"Yes, chronological cloning is a fine trick, but I had to change something in my past – abruptly, so I went back to the time when Leek was literally dying and changed it," Helen shrugged. "My young acquaintance – it just doesn't work this way with him, you know?"

"Let's see," Lester said, sounding like his usual sarcastic self, "the ARC is or was the only thing standing in the way of futuristic lizard men who have an affinity for brains and who plan to conquer England at the very least and are aided and abetted by a homicidal time travelling maniac? Have I missed anything else?"

"It's not an affinity – it's a dietary requirement," Caroline snapped from her back seat. "Brains make us smart and intelligent, and human brains allow us to acquire human shapes and blend in. However, once that shape is acquired, all we need is raw teleost fish to remain human-looking and smart."

"Really?" Nick couldn't help but ask sceptically.

"Take a look," Caroline withdrew a fresh fish from a portable freezer, unhinged her jaws once more and swallowed her fish whole – just like a circus performer swallowing a sword. Only, unlike in the circus, the whole swallowed fish just vanished in Caroline's size-altering mouth.

"Amazing," Nick whispered. "I don't suppose that you'll agree to have some tests ran on you, do you?"

"Why don't you ask my mothers' permission, sir?" Caroline snapped, sobering the mood down once more.

"We're here," Stephen declared, as the big van suddenly stopped. "Oh, and the rest of the gang is here as well."

"Oh, _good_."

"Lester, shut up!"

* * *

"Here we are," Connor said grandly, as he and others emerged from their vehicles. "Caroline's dog breeding HQ. Not too shabby, I suppose."

"Reminds me of her van, massive, solid, and rather impressive," Abby muttered, "or of her shotgun too, I suppose. She has a style... too bad in mashes with her taste in clothing."

"Um, her van is right over there, and there are people getting out of it – oh, we _know_ them," Sarah Page said quietly – her first day in the field was turning out to be quite an eventful one. "We know them very well."

"Nick, Jenny – you're all right!" Abby said excitedly, "I mean... oh – the James Lester and the rest is here too... Why is Caroline here too?"

"She's a hostage of sorts, plus we need her to get inside," Stephen said quietly as he came over the van. "The big bird alarm was just a red herring, wasn't it?"

"Hey, Stephen, didn't see you this morning – a busy night?" Becker said, trying to lighten-up the still rather sombre mood.

"Not as busy as yours, most likely, _and_ James Lester will be paying for the repairs of his office out of your pay check, you two," Stephen shook back.

Becker turned red, and so did Sarah, only in her instance it was more of an inky-brown colour. "Right, while they do that, maybe we should come in," Caroline said from the now-opened gateway, "because my mothers' time travelling employee is always scaring Michael whenever they two of them are near to each other."

"Of course he does – he has probably accumulated enough energy from the fourth dimension for the smarter animals to begin sense it – and they never like it when they do," Helen responded before Abby could. "Yet on the other hand, we must get inside – _time_ is of the essence here, you know?"

"Firstly, it's not even creepy – it's scary when you say '_time_' like that," Abby shivered, "and secondly, where did you get that honking big watch? It looks like something that Alice's White Rabbit buddy would use."

"It's not a wrist-watch, it's my custom-made time anomaly detector – and much more," Helen said calmly. "And by custom-made, I mean custom-made for yours truly," she added a trifle smugly.

"Can I see it?" Connor asked, rubbing his hands from excitement.

"All in due time," Helen smiled back, rather condescendingly, "there's going to be quite a lot of futuristic technology in your brief future – won't there be, Miss Steele?"

"Yes, but since I'm a hostage, someone else will have to lead you there," Caroline Steele replied in clip tones. "Can I go under house arrest now?"

"I think you're more of a strategically important hostage," James Lester said smartly. Caroline sent him a look.

"I think that you misjudge my mothers. While they won't be pleased with my choice, it's nothing as compared to their hatred for you, James Lester."

"Just why is it so?" Stephen couldn't help but ask. "I mean, the man-"

"I am right here," James Lester interrupted him.

"Exactly," Caroline nodded, "and her Majesty's government is still rather sexist, not to mention bureaucratic. My other mother has been passed all too often in favour of someone like him...and the amazing mammoth had just crystallized it for her."

"In other words, Lester, never piss off a woman who is already pissed at the whole masculine half of humanity," Jenny said from the front of the group. "Even if she is a futuristic lizard person, right?" she half-turned to Caroline.

"We are people, yes, and we may have descended from lizards," Caroline said quietly. "Look – we're here."

* * *

"That's your basement? You really did plan a military take-over here!" Connor exclaimed in amazement several moments later. "And what's with the holding pens?"

"Once upon a time, when we were testing the main one at my mothers', several raptors came through. We had to put them here until we managed to send them back," Caroline explained calmly. "Just for the record, they were much smaller than the one owned by Leek."

"There were several species of raptors, from the ones that were waist-high to us down to the ones that were waist-high to a T-Rex," Nick said slowly. "The ones we have met – the ones that Leek had – they were the middle-sized ones, deinonychus, to be more precise."

"That's nice, Nick," Helen said from her corner, as she helped Stephen and Becker take off the front shielding from some massive apparatus, "but could Connor Temple come over here now?"

"I already am," Connor was looking impressed and overwhelmed at the rather impressive piece of machinery. "Caroline, what is this?"

"A matching piece – well, relatively matching – to your time anomaly detector at the ARC, complete with signal overriding assemblage," Caroline said dispassionately, pointing to several knotty pieces of hardware. "See?"

"You have the ARC bugged?"

"No, we have your detector bugged. The ARC is secondary at best, and your co-workers..." Caroline looked at anything else other than the people in the room, "well, we're only interested in the brains at best and the rest at worst."

"You'll eat us?" Abby goggled. She never liked the other woman and in lieu of recent events she probably never will, but the idea of getting eaten was a new one. Nasty one to say the least.

"Your descendants eat us – in fact, they eat almost every other living creature in our time, that's also a part of the reason why we want to move here," Caroline shrugged.

"What?"

"You call them the future predators, if I remember it correctly."

"What?! Helen!?" Nick whirled to his female namesake in the room. "You said that they have descended from bats!"

"And if back then I've told you and Stephen that they were really people, with their thumbs genetically removed to 'compensate' all that mental re-wiring, what would you have done, _if_ you have believed me? Keep in mind, the actual genetic differences are _so_ small that any hybridization between us and them would be fully _viable_. It took us around 3 million years to change from apes into this, current version...and it will take us considerably less time to screw our planet's ecosystem almost completely, reduce our genetic legacy to a vicious, intelligent species of a carnivorous beast, and leave the rest of the world to various sentient species of reptiles, who need to eat brains to survive...yet who are heads-above civilization-wise over _them_, our direct genetic descendants, whom we twisted fighting some bleeping World War Three or whatever!!"

Helen straightened and looked at everyone else in the room. Her face was pale, but her facial expression was determined. "Yes, I am amoral, most likely. Yes, I am insane – megalomaniac, to be precise. But I am also a damned anthropologist and have no intention of letting that future coming to pass, and not just for the purpose of _this_ having come to pass. But I also need help – not just psychological. So please, lay of the sentencing before Christine Johnson and her forces re-write the present and the future _their_ way instead, no?"

"Cutter, I don't think your ex is lying this time," Lester said slowly, as Helen's exclamations died away in the shadows of the basement. "But what do I know? You respect me only marginally more than lizard girl over there."

"Call me that once more time, James Lester, and I will physically hurt you," Caroline Steele half-turned towards the bureaucrat. "Understand, you stinking monkey?"

"Um, before it all breaks down, how do we stop them?" Jenny slowly asked Helen, looking at the other woman as if she had seen her for the first time. "Do we jam their signals or not?"

"It jams the alarm signal, not the time anomalies themselves – at the current setting," Helen said, half-turning back to the machine and Connor, who even now itched at having to go at some _really advanced_ technology. "But if we re-route the wiring here, here, and here, and flick the switch, the two signals will mesh, creating a tunnel that goes through space rather through time, connecting this place with the ARC...geographically only, not chronologically."

"You don't need to use long words," Abby said the first thing that came to the tip of her tongue.

"Sorry – I just don't know any shorter words that would be just as accurate."

"So, let's flip the switch already," James Lester spoke-up again.

"Don't we need Becker's men?"

"They're coming in already," Becker nodded to Nick and Lester and turned to Caroline of all people. "Do you have any dogs trained for combat?"

"Yes, and they're at the ARC. Hope that mothers haven't decided to punish me through them," Caroline sighed. "They weren't too excited when I quit human psychology and began to train them." She finally looked up, and she looked miserable. "Everybody's here, can we go now?"

Mechanically, Connor flipped the switch, and the world went away.

* * *

The transition from a regular basement room to a most irregular tunnel apparently composed from shimmering, blue and white energy of various tints and tones was not quite smooth for some feet; Connor, in particular, had the ill luck to slip and fall on his butt, his eyes wide with amazement:

"Holy crap!"

"Maybe you should sit this one out," Abby said slowly, as she jumped up to look over the shoulders of some taller people. "I see Caroline's moms...and they got a lot of... back-up behind us."

"That's not good," Connor said slowly, "this is very bad after all."

* * *

It was certainly so, especially in front. Caroline and her mothers may have worn human shape for a long time, but most of their allies have never worn it, most likely, and certainly didn't start now. Admittedly, this was good, because this also meant that that the ARC employees still had their own brains inside their heads...but that was the only good thing: the monstrous humanoids seemed to be armed just as well as the ARC troops, and were also physically taller and stronger than humans. Still, this didn't stop Christine Johnson from altering the shape of her jaws and emitting another curse in her native tongue, whatever that was.

"Now-now, let's not end it in mass violence," James Lester spoke before anyone else could. "You can always surrender to her Majesty's authority, and we'll settle it like civilized people. After all, in a fair fight, Becker can beat any of your men."

"That's a good idea," spoke another, unfamiliar (well, to most humans in the extradimensional tunnel anyways), "I still need my pound of flesh, and the Limey soldier-boy is a perfect way for me getting this." The crazy-looking assassin of Nick and Jenny's (and also Helen's, and possibly Stephen's) acquaintance was back. "What do you say, sir?"

"Another one of those brain-eaters of yours, Christine?" Lester tried his best to ignore the disturbing-looking youth, and it was a good try, but the youth wasn't having any of it.

"Oh no, sir," he said, still smiling in a rather crazy style. "Just like the anthropology doctor back there, I'm a character of rather different colour, which means that I could rip you apart even easier than they. So what do you say, sir?"

"I can take him – sir," Becker spoke up, ignoring the noises coming from behind him. "Junior, you're on!"

"Oh good!" the latter smiled, revealing a smile that was far too wide to be properly human as well as teeth that were the wrong kind to be human as well. "I do so love taking apart you men-at-arms. Admittedly, you're a bit on the scrawny side for me, but given the fact that this is an island, and the island subspecies tend to be smaller than the mainland ones, you will do nicely. Bring it!" he barked abruptly, shifting from lucid to alert, and taking off his jacket to reveal a leather vest and little else. "Bring it on!"

Becker found it hard not to stare. His opponent seemed to be hardly any older than Connor Temple or Abby Maitland, yet he seemed to be made almost exclusively of cords of muscle and sinew wrapped around his bones, with hands seemingly too big for the rest of the body. In short, his opponent suddenly looked not so funny at all, but rather, very, very good at what he did.

But then again, so was Becker. "Come on then, junior!" he shouted, as he took off his own upper clothing. "Take your best shot!"

The next moment the latter did, and things began to grow much more violent than before. Becker didn't even have time to reach before an inhumanly quick slam in his ribs knocked him prone several meters away from where he'd stood – the opponent was much stronger than he looked as well. Taller too – but that was ridiculous: people did not just grow taller at a blink of an eye.

Suddenly Becker found himself lifted up by his shoulders and stared right into his opposite's eyes, which were as flat and black as two chips of stone. "Now you die!" the latter said, sounding cheerful and magnanimous once again.

Becker twisted his body and kicked his attacker in the upper torso, catching him sideways in a chin. Immediately he found himself flung away with even greater strength than before, as a rather animalistic sound came from behind his back.

Quickly Becker began to get up – he just wasn't fast enough. A pair of strong arms grasped his own upper extremities and pulled him back into the air. "Good," the voice was no longer so jovial, "but not good enough."

Becker slammed both of his feet into one of his assailant's knees, resulting in a grant that sounded marginally closer to his ears, so he slammed back his head and was rewarded with another fling across the room... only this time he felt his arms getting wrenched out of their sockets. Once more, he found himself lying on the floor of the tunnel, this time with the added bonus of pain in his arms and shoulders.

Slowly, (but not as slowly as he thought), he flopped on his back, seeing his adversary stomp towards him, facial expression murderous. Thinking quickly he kicked the bastard in the groin with both feet, stopping the latter's advance, but otherwise there was no sign of any physical discomfort. When, however, Becker used this momentary pause to kick him again, this time in the face, the man roared, and it was a sound that no human throat could make.

And then he grabbed Becker's legs and raised one of his own feet, which now seemed somehow blurry. "Die!" the howl shook the tunnel's walls.

"I think not."

* * *

There was a pause, as yet another new face appeared in the tunnel, seemingly not from either end. Or, as Nick and Jenny and the rest of the ARC's field crew realized, not exactly new. "Have we met?" he asked gruffly, remembering the psychological warfare and the dinosauroids.

"No," the woman shook her braided mane, "that was my younger sister, Melinoe."

"Then you must be Nemesis," Helen said firmly. "Melinoe mentioned you once or twice in a complimentary way – for her, anyways."

"She usually does. Nice to meet you at last," the woman smiled, her body casting no shadow and her eyes being two pools of light of the same colour as the tunnel's walls. "But I regret that we cannot talk – I have a ward to take care of, isn't it right Malacoda?"

The face of Becker's assailant acquired a new expression. "It's the third time when he hit me, isn't it?" he asked quietly.

"Yes, yes it is. And now we're going to have a talk about how you mess with the space-time continuum," Nemesis nodded calmly, grabbing him by an ear, which was shaped more like that of a bat or a hyena rather than a human.

"Hey! Doesn't Helen get a talk as well!" you just couldn't keep James Lester down.

"Stephen Hart did it last night already, and I think she's realizing it on her own as well," Nemesis replied serenely, but with a highly unamused look. "Oh, and Ms. Johnson? I wish I could sympathise with your position, but due to the youngster's involvement in it, and me being the eldest member of our kind here, I'm removing it from this space-time continuum. I suggest that you find your own way to the future, without my kind's help."

Christine Johnson emitted some more sounds in her native tongue. "The good anthropologist stayed fully within her limits and is actually getting somewhat saner, unlike some," she gave the ear a good twist. "Good-bye, Ms Johnson!" she snapped her fingers.

The tunnel exploded.

* * *

"What the- just what had happened here?!" James Lester shrieked few moments later when he realized that he was sitting in his office, and it was morning of the same day before. "Just when will this day start making any sense?!"

"Don't try, Lester, we had this experience before, back with the dinosauroids," Nick grimaced, as he and Jenny got into the office. "Dinosaurs or giant eagles can be handled easily, no problem – it's when Helen begins to talk about extra-dimensional physics for dummies 101, _then_ it is time to run for the hills."

"She wasn't talking about extra-dimensional physics back in Miss Steele's basement, was she?" Lester began, but his assistant interrupted:

"Sir, Helen Cutter is here to meet you, as you have stated last night. Also, Ms. Johnson has called and told me that in lieu of recent events notwithstanding, she still expects you at her house tomorrow morning."

"Can't you tell her that I am to fish in South America or something?" Lester paled slightly.

"Which one?"

"Just send the non-brains-eating-one in," Lester groaned.

* * *

"What has happened here?" Becker snapped. "And why are my arms are working again?"

"Oh, don't worry – Sarah will still be able to kiss you to make it better," Stephen said slowly, "and as for the first question, it's similar to what Helen did when she upgraded Claudia to Jenny only on a much stronger and deeper scale."

"Meaning _what_?"

At that moment the time anomaly detector's alarm sounded on. "Oh, look, it's a Haast's Eagle, the world's biggest bird of prey that has ever existed," Connor said, as he compounded map and visual images. "And it's already flying away."

"Helen will be pretty busy with Nick and Lester and others, and the time anomaly has already closed on itself," Becker pointed out.

"If Connor adds another current with reversed polarity to his thingamajig, he'll be able to open, as well as close time anomalies," Stephen explained curtly.

"So we go and capture the bird while Connor stays here and fiddles?" Abby asked.

"Or I can do it from the back of Caroline's van and save us time and gas money," Connor shrugged.

There was a pause as everybody looked back at Connor. "What?" he said. "Merely pointing out options."

"Well don't," Abby said coldly. "You're not thinking with your right head."

Connor turned red. "Reptile, not biologically compatible, I _am_ thinking with my right head in the right way, unlike some," he snapped.

Abby turned red. "You know what?" she said flatly. "We're through with this – do what you want, I'm taking the day off."

"Um," Connor began, but Becker interrupted him. "Load the damn thing up and go after her to apologize. But we are sending the eagle back straight from the field: this _isn`t_ some sort of Jurassic park."

Connor paused and looked at the others and just submitted, even though he _knew_ that his personal life had just taken a turn for the worse – again.

_To be continued..._


	7. Chapter 7

**The Other Way**

**Chapter 6**

"So," Connor said in a rather self-important way, "the Haast's eagle. The biggest and heaviest flying bird ever seen in the world. It probably appeared around 5 thousand years ago B.C, vanished in the fourteen-hundreds of the last millennium. It preyed upon flightless birds of New Zealand, even bigger and heavier than it was, and it may have hunted the Maoris when they first came here."

"Aha," Becker nodded sagely as he heard Connor babble over the walkie-talkie. "Now how do we lure it into range?"

"Into what?"

"Range. The tranquilizer guns have a limited range, and Sarah here suggests that any really big bird tends to fly really high, probably beyond our reach. How do we bring it down?"

"First we must locate it, and then gain the high ground close to it, and then we lure it into shooting range," Stephen answered instead. "I and Nick did it once with a pteranodon, and it worked out fine."

"Where were we?" Connor asked despite his workings on the time anomaly manipulator.

"Dealing with the anurognathus swarm," Stephen answered curtly.

"Oh yeah, I forgot... Good times, good times – Abby and I almost got eaten," Connor sighed. "Think I should apologize to her?"

"What for? You have no relationship with Caroline, and as for the whole brain eating thing? Abby didn't really have the right to make it specifically personal – when it all comes down, it was I who got almost broken apart by that freak," Becker's voice sounded unusually bitter at the moment. "So, what right does she have to degrade it all down to her personal tragedy? She-"

"Becker, that's enough," Stephen interrupted the other man before the latter's temper could explode. "Let's just find the bird and bring it down. As a bird of prey, it probably isn't the smartest bundle of feathers that ever flown the skies – we should have no problem taking care of it once it's located. Let's go."

* * *

"So, Helen, who's Nemesis?" James Lester began, when Lorraine interrupted him once again.

"Sir, before she left, Caroline Steele left you some cheesecake saying that you ought to eat in lieu of your tomorrow's visit to her parents – it will fortify you for that event. Shall I put it into a freezer?"

Jenny barely stifled her giggles at the look on Lester's face once he heard about cheesecake; Helen and Nick didn't bother.

"Yes, Lorraine, put it into the freezer," Lester said in a carefully controlled voice, "and please don't bother me about such matters again unless it's absolutely necessary... Now where were we?" he turned back to Helen Cutter.

"Let's see," Helen pantomimed a work of deep thought on her face. "I first ran into Melinoe and Iymrith in the Triassic – the Late Triassic, when the dinosaurs had almost supplanted the earlier dicynodonts. We quickly established that besides the usage of English as a common language we had little else in common, and so when we finally parted each other's company, we didn't willingly seek it out again. Yet, at that time, Melinoe mentioned that she had a big family, and Nemesis was one of the names that she used in that monologue of hers. Therefore, I assume that it's reasonable that she may've mentioned my name to this Nemesis, who had come at the nick of time to save Becker from dying due to massive physical damage. Next question?"

"How long did you knew about Johnson's little take-over plan?"

"As soon as her equipment had overridden yours," Helen said, then caught the look on Lester's face and settled down for a longer explanation. "Remember that I have my own detector?"

"Yes, and Connor really wants a look at it."

"Well, that's only a part of the equation," Helen said mirthlessly. "And the other part of it is precisely _me_.

* * *

"There, there it goes – the elusive Haast's eagle. Stronger than a speeding bullet, faster than a tall building, smarter than a locomotive-"

"Connor, shut up. You're not particularly funny at this moment," Caroline glared at her ex-boyfriend, "and you're interfering with my driving."

"Yes, well, maybe you should let Stephen do the driving then," Connor said stiffly. "He managed it fine in- when- what had happened, exactly?"

"That Nemesis entity removed my mothers' time-travelling ally from this time line," Caroline shrugged. "To be more precise, she has removed him from the present and past, thus changing the time line and its' reality completely-like."

Connor blinked. "That's a really big guess," he said slowly.

"Yes, well, I eat a lot of fish and that is why I am smart," Caroline said flatly as she stared ahead, following Becker's vehicle for a change. "But not so smart as to figure out as to how to outwit a giant killer bird. Any ideas?"

"I _have_ an idea, I told you that already," Stephen growled out, "all we need is a lure... what's that?"

Far away in the sky a big black cross-like shape suddenly appeared – and it began to descend downwards at a high speed. Upon seeing it, Michael, the big Brazilian mastiff that Caroline took with her on missions, began to snarl quietly, but in an angry way.

"That's our bird!" Stephen shouted. "Go, go, go!"

The ARC cars roared off.

* * *

"Say what?" James Lester stared at Helen Cutter as if she was mentally ill, which she probably was.

"Well, you see," the anthropologist turned time traveller at least had the grace to be embarrassed, "some people are born... sensitive to the time anomalies: they can generally – no, vaguely - foresee when and where one of those holes will occur, and maybe even seek it out and go in," she paused. "Mind you, I speak from personal experience, from back then, from when I found my very first time anomaly..."

"Yes, let's speak about that time," Nick growled crossly.

Helen twisted in her seat, her facial expression shifting from meditative to angry as well. "Nick Cutter, I have cooked and cleaned, programmed the VCR so that you'd stare at my butt and have kept your papers in order. I have been the perfect wife, and you wouldn't even give me a cactus to care about while you were busy promoting your career. So don't give me any of your grievances – I can match them with my own!"

The two Cutters, soon to be ex-husband-and-wife, got off their seats, glaring heavily at each other, hands clenched, jaws locked, determination to go at each other hand and fist etched clearly on their brows. And then someone else intervened.

"Okay then!" Jenny Lewis said brightly. "I am so glad to see that we're taking our problems off the epic scale and down to more human-sized issues. Now let's settle back down and have the marriage counsellor speak, yes?"

"You realize that the purpose of marriage counselling is to preserve the marriage, not break it up?" for one of the very few instants in his life, James Lester spoke without truly thinking – and he was immediately punished for it, as the other three people just turned around towards him glaring and suggesting that he was in for some physical pain.

"Oh, bugger!"

* * *

"Oh bugger!" Connor yelled as Caroline's van tore the street – right after Becker's vehicle and the matching cars of Becker's forces. "This is going to be very, very bad-!"

Abruptly, the van stopped causing Connor to jerk in his seat – if he hadn't been strapped in, he would've been thrown clear out of his seat, but since he was strapped in, he just experienced a physical shock and nothing more.

"Connor," Stephen said abruptly, "listen to me. The eagle has landed, so we're going to try and use the net to bring it down, while you prepare your machine!"

"Let me assure you, it's quite ready already," Connor said stiffly, "all I need is a one good shot."

"There it is, then," Caroline said flatly. "Take it!" She pointed at the giant eagle that was sitting on the sidewalk, eating a dog.

"Yes'm!" Connor saluted smartly, twirled his portable machine around, and took a 'shot'.

Only it turned out to be a shot in the real manner, as the time anomaly flashed open and close right on the giant eagle, either taking the bird into itself as it closed, or just destroyed it completely.

There was a pause and then the other two people in the van stared at Connor. "Did you send it back to its proper time?" Caroline finally asked.

"Oh... oh yeah! Of course!"

* * *

One moment the eagle was sitting in a strange, concrete wilderness where everything seemed dead and there was no proper trees at all, and the next it seemed to be back home, where everything was warm, and the trees were lush and green, and the sun was just beginning to rise. As some sort of instinctive excitement rose in its' breast, the Haast's eagle spread its' huge wings and emitted a joyous cry – a cry that was almost fifty million years too early to be heard over the planet.

As the eagle flew away in search of a new meal (it never had time to properly enjoy the first one), an ambulocetus, swimming in from the eastern coast, observed the big bird's departure with a lazy eye.

* * *

The cell phone rang. "Yes?" Jenny spoke into it, as James Lester began to quickly understand the folly of getting sarcastic with a social love triangle of sorts. "Sarah? What's up? Oh, the eagle's gone? Connor and the rest of you gotten lucky? Glad to hear it. Oh no, nothing's wrong with me other than James Lester-" She paused and suddenly nodded in agreement. "Yes, of course, we're on it."

She switched her cell phone off and looked to the rest of the people in the room. "Look, Lester, I'm sorry that we're cutting your interview slash gathering short, but Connor and Abby had a bit of a falling out this morning and Sarah and others want to ensure that the two of them settle their differences today. So, if you do not mind, we're leaving now."

"All three of you?" Lester asked flatly. "Looking for Miss Maitland?"

"No, Helen's waiting for Stephen to come back, and besides, it will clearly do her and Nick some good if the two of them are still separated by a big distance," Jenny smiled sweetly in way that guy would've been punched straight in the face as a response instead. "So, good luck with your meeting tomorrow, sir."

James Lester could only glare in something resembling an unholy rage as the mismatched trio slipped out of his office. "I really," he muttered, "really must do something about my employee policy, and real soon."

* * *

Abby Maitland was sitting despondently at her ARC office and watched the dinofelis kittens play in their pens, and felt lonely. If she had swallowed her pride and went along with Connor-

No, this had nothing to do with Connor – Abby just didn't like Caroline, period. The damn woman was just so, so self-confident- no. For an evil, brain-eating lizard person Caroline was certainly accepted and that-

"Can sit down?"

"Sure, Jenny. Um, is meeting with Lester over?"

"Yes, yes it is," the older woman smiled slightly at some inside joke. "Abby, Sarah called. The eagle has been dealt with, and Connor wants to talk to you."

"Yeah, well, I don't know if I want to talk to him," Abby paused. "No, wait, this isn't because of his past relationship, it's just that, well, I don't know what to say. It's so easy when the ex-girlfriend keeps at it, but when she doesn't, what can you do? Wait, how do you deal with Helen being in the same vicinity as you?"

"Easily," Jenny shrugged. "Helen prefers to spend time with Stephen, and I with Nick. There's nothing between them romantically-wise, let me assure you – they almost began to physically fight one another at Lester's office just moments before. So no worries for me on _that_ front, let me assure you!"

"Thanks," Abby smiled but immediately grew serious once again, "but, well-"

"But nothing, Abby. You have feelings for Connor and they're reciprocated. So, why can't you accept it and be a couple?"

"Because I don't want to be like my mother!" Abby suddenly began to wail. "I love dad, but he's so the man of the house, that it's not even funny! I want to be more than just a Mrs. Temple, yet I cannot get Connor to take showers more often than once a week or so! And if I cannot do that, how will I able to remain my own person after all?"

"That's a good question, Abby, and while the phrase 'sticking to your beliefs' is probably just a big cliché to someone of your age, I would say that try it. It works."

Abby turned red. "Yes, I guess you're right. It's just that... I am kind of scared of this whole relationship thing anyways, you know?"

"Almost everyone is scared, unless they're someone like Helen Cutter, who has clearly achieved some sort of a feminine Zen and will strive to achieve her relationship with Stephen no matter what. Maybe we should ask her about it later."

"Um, Miss Lewis – can I speak to Abby in private, please?"

"Oh, Connor – I guess we didn't hear you come in. Certainly, certainly, I will leave you two to your privacy."

"Jenny? Thanks for our talk. We really should talk more."

"Glad to have helped, Abby!"

* * *

"Well, our lovebirds are all settled down at last," Jenny told Nick with a sly smile several moments later as she met him at his office. "Hopefully, they will begin to fix up whatever rifts they have created for themselves by now, eh?"

"Exactly!" Nick grinned back. "Jenny Lewis, you're a genius when it comes to interpersonal relationships!"

"Well, among all of the scholars of nature around here one interpersonal relationship genius certainly rounds up nicely whatever the nature of the local assemblage."

"You mean the study of the time anomalies?"

"Yes, of course!" Jenny beamed, and then toned her facial expression down to a more demure look as she leaned towards her almost-steady boyfriend for a kiss.

It was at that moment that Stephen and Helen burst into the room, holding hands, but the grimace of pain on Helen's face (it made her face appear almost lopsided) clearly implied that this was anything but a romantic greeting.

"Nick, Jenny," Helen's voice was also slightly distorted from pain, yet carried a sort of a desperate authority as well. "Grab Stephen and me – _please_! Something bad is going to happen _now_!"

The tone of urgency in Helen's voice made the other pair comply with Helen's wishes: they took her and Stephen's hands, and-

-the whole world turned mad.

_To be continued..._


	8. Chapter 8

**The other way**

**Chapter 7**

The shift was sudden and abrupt: one moment the four people stood in the ARC lab as various light and sound alarms went off in a rapid sequence of succession, the next moment the whole light-and-sound cacophony fell abruptly silent, and they found themselves standing in some sort of a somewhat fortified pavilion among the gentle twilit tropical jungle.

"Where are we?" Jenny groaned. "Helen, what are you up to now?"

"The place is early Eocene, 49 MYA," Helen said, looking none-too-happy than the other people, "the place is the future site of Messel pits, Germany."

"Germany? Looks more like India – Nick, what's wrong?"

"The Messel pits, Helen? One of the richest sources of Eocene fossils?" Nick looked like he was experiencing a revelation of some sort. "Helen, that's, that's-"

"Yes, well, hold on to your urges," Helen grimaced. "Besides some really interesting local prosimians, this place is wildly underrated, in no small part because of the way how these fossils will be made."

"What do you mean? The modern science had established that the Messel pits will become so rich in fossils because of a massive eruption of natural gas..." Nick's voice trailed away as realization hit. "And it's going to happen soon, isn't it?"

"Around midnight," Helen nodded sagely. "The good news is that there will a time anomaly opening at around the same time to escape, the bad news is that that time anomaly is part of a chain of time anomalies that cover a span of millions of years and thousands of kilometres apart and if we get stuck in that chain I honestly can't guarantee that I'll be able to bring us back at that same moment from which we left."

"Meaning what?"

"Meaning you want to see what the ARC can begin to look like in 8 years worth of your absence?" Helen snapped, as she wandered around the pavilion, pulling out a pair of gas masks. "Now, who wants the spare?"

"Me, maybe?" Jenny said wryly.

"Well, maybe, but you already get the spare anti-bloodsucker suit."

"Bloodsucker suit?"

"Yes. Mosquitoes and flies, leeches and ticks, you call them – the Eocene has got them, and they're of a quite large size, too," Helen said with a grimace. "And even if you won't wear the spare suit because it's unfashionable or something, please wear the shoes at least. It's a jungle out there, high heels aren't recommended!"

"Helen!" Nick interrupted his soon-to-be ex-wife's rant sharply. "Why are we here?"

"I don't know!" Helen actually wailed. "This certainly isn't my doing – not the bloody Eocene, which is the third worse time period after the Permian and the Triassic!! Fascinating prosimians aside, this whole time period is a-"

A loud avian shriek interrupted her rumblings.

* * *

Throughout his tenure at the ARC, Connor Temple had experienced many odd and incomprehensive events, from the ordinary prehistoric or futuristic creatures coming from beyond the walls of the modern time and space to some sort of extra-dimensional creatures – to extra-dimensional tunnels – to...

...to whatever was happening now in the ARC. The alarms were burning out or dying down as whatever had caused them to reach just grew stronger. It wasn't a time anomaly, not even one that was opening right at the ARC: it was more as if the ARC itself was being, was being...

...sucked into that theoretical fourth dimension of Helen Cutter's, Connor supposed. Well, no longer just _theoretical_, as the walls of the center seemed to be melting into a clear, albeit a misty, sky, and the floor and stairways of the building too were breaking up into a grass-covered soil, and...

...and he suddenly found himself running face-first into a grassy knoll that seemingly manifested itself right in the merging of several ARC corridors, with the one leading to his lab veering away from-

Something kicked him so hard in the arse that he practically flew over the side of the hill and down it into the corridor, rolling along its length and into the unlocked doors. There, still unchanged, stood his newest invention, the time anomaly manifestation device that he had used earlier on the giant eagle.

Connor jumped forwards and grasped the control panel; the next moment –

* * *

There was a loud shriek coming from the side of Helen's temporary shelter – a shriek that seemingly came from the tops of the trees. "That's the eagle, mates," Stephen said, as the others just stood silently there, "I heard it cry out like this before – in our times. But what-"

"Gastornis," Helen said slowly. "Also known as the bone-crunching terror bird of the Eocene. Taller than a man, weighing half a ton of feather-clad muscle, with a beak that could snap our bones like dry twigs."

"And yet the Haast's eagle will still be able to take one on and bring it down," Nick said firmly. "Want to bet?"

"Why don't we go and take a look?" Helen shrugged back. "The eagle will probably eat its' kill right there on the spot, as it been used to do in New Zealand."

"This isn't New Zealand."

"To an eagle's ecological point of view – same thing. Flightless birds of different size, tropical climate, no large land predators, if you don't count the ambulocetus and its' kin... As far as the eagle is concerned, this very well can be home."

"Um, this is very fascinating and all, but could you people turn around so that I would get changed?" Jenny interrupted the other woman once more. "And Nick, don't give me that look. I mean, I mean I know that we... but this..."

"Mate, let's just turn and give Jenny some privacy," Stephen exclaimed, as Jenny slowly reddened from embarrassment, and Helen looked on with a quietly bemused facial expression. "Clearly, you haven't reached that stage yet."

"We haven't yet been to that damn funeral!" Jenny exclaimed angrily – and fell silent, as the small jungle breezes began to carry the warm and metallic smell of blood.

"Well," Helen finally spoke after a long period of silence, "maybe you should consider it a chance for a practice run, no, Nick?"

"Oh, shut up!"

* * *

"What's happening?" Abby managed to ask Becker as the ARC's alarms have finally been replaced by silence, and there was little more than just natural scenery all around them. "What has happened, to be more precise?"

"I don't know," the chief of ARC's security gasped, as he vainly stared around the hilly plain that had replaced London's urban jungle. "One moment all is peaceful, the next moment everything breaks loose, and-"

"Things fall apart, the center cannot hold, mere anarchy is loosed upon the world," Caroline gasped, as she stumbled along, one of her hands in a death-grip upon Michael's collar. "This is what my other mother meant, that when a time traveller takes a personal dislike to you, you're screwed."

"Caroline – are you all right?" Abby cut-off her original sharp retort as she saw that the other young woman looked flushed, pale and sweaty, half-crouching, half-huddling, trying to make herself as small as possible.

"No," Caroline looked in the shorter woman's direction, her mouth twisted in a humourless smile, but deep inside her eyes lurked something too similar to physical pain to Abby's liking. "I am most certainly not. Listen, uh – you, I know that we have barely withstood each other and all, but, if you'll be ever able to meet my mothers, can you tell them-"

"Oh, be quiet – it's not like anyone even of your species has died from a little food poisoning!"

Slowly, Abby (alongside Becker) turned their attention towards the new speaker, their eyes widening in a very concerned surprise: it was one of the extra-dimensional creatures who apparently were at loggerheads with Helen Cutter, Melinoe.

* * *

The sigh was a gruesome one. Unlike a moa, a gastornis is a carnivore itself, quite capable of self-defence, except that it wasn't exactly hard-wired to do so: nothing in its' true time epoch could hope to defeat it, certainly no flying bird.

Of course, a Haast's eagle is facing pretty much the same predicament: it just isn't that good at self-defence, especially against relatively smaller creatures, such as humans. However, it was also very good at bringing down flightless birds bigger or heavier than itself, and the gastornis and similar Eocene flightless birds fitted the criteria very well.

As a result, this particular time-travelling Haast's eagle was busy feasting on its' kill, when the humans had appeared and stared at it in a rather nervous apprehension. The eagle stared back, also obviously not happy about the development, but doing nothing about it either. For several heartbeats that impasse continued to be, and then the eagle stood up into an attacking poise – and its' eyes flashed blue.

"Oh no!" Helen Cutter gasped as she slowly took a step back. "Stephen, what had Connor Temple done to the bird?"

"I think that he had opened a time anomaly portal right upon it or something," Stephen groaned, as the eagle's body began to shake and shimmer as if it was made from electricity or a similar energy. "Let me guess – it has infused the bird with that extra-dimensional energy or something?"

"I think," Jenny spoke before Helen could reply, "that maybe we should retreat a bit before the eagle decides the stretch its' muscles a bit-"

The eagle stretched. Its legs elongated and became more suited for walking that for perching, and its' body became smaller and stockier, as its neck elongated, and the head became blockier. The wings too grew bigger yet not as wide as they had been before, no longer truly suited for flying unlike earlier. In a matter of seconds, the Haast's eagle transformed itself into a flightless gastornis-like avian – and the people didn't like it one bit.

"Connor Temple," Helen slowly swore as she shifted her stance into a less defensive one. "What have you created?!"

* * *

"...What you created?!" echoed distantly in Connor's lab of a chamber. Connor ignored it – for the moment, of course – and continued to set his machine at a different goal, one that was much closer to him in both time and space. He hated to leave Nick and others hanging like this because of his actions, yet some things had to be done first, if Melinoe were to have her way completely, the results would be far worse...

* * *

"You! I remember you! Helen Cutter has called you deadly!" Becker suddenly growled, startling Abby. "Your name is Melinoe, right?"

"Àye, it is!" Melinoe winked, still looking like a rather crazy and exotic-looking Eliza Dushku clone, yet her lack of shadow indicated that she should be taken more seriously than at her first appearance. "So happy that you remembered it – this will make our negotiations so much easier!"

"What negotiations? You just came over here, apparently destroyed everything, and-"

"I did not – Connor Temple did. Where is your ardent lover anyways, Abby Maitland? I have some gratitude to express to him, after all, without him; I would never have been able to gain a window into this brave new world at all."

"And now you can leave," Abby snapped. "Helen Cutter... is a nasty piece of work and probably not quite sane, but at least she's _human_, she has a _shadow_ – unlike you, you ghost in the time machine or whatever!"

Melinoe just looked down at the short blonde. "Now that's just stupid," she said flatly, clearly unimpressed by Abby's show of defiance, "I can destroy you, yet come willing to negotiate and you piss me off?"

"I think," Becker spoke up deliberately slowly, "that you're bluffing. I've had Sarah look you up, just in case, and you came up as the spirit of nightmares or something like that. Now I admit that nightmares can be a very nasty thing, but like all dreams, they're not real, they're just in one's head, and that's why you were all about that psychological warfare – 'cause you got nothing else otherwise."

"Now _that_ sounded like a challenge," Melinoe said calmly, almost smiling once again. "Now that is something that I can deal with decently. All psychological warfare, am I? Very well, then let me assure you that the best nightmares have always something real in them; something like – that."

'That' proved to be a giant bear, bigger than a grizzly, let alone a man, approaching Becker and his companions at a quick and steady pace.

"Now that is a North American giant short-faced bear," Abby groaned. "We're screwed."

Becker didn't flinch, but continued to stare at Melinoe and the approaching mega-bear. "Maybe not."

* * *

"Helen," Nick muttered, "what sort of madness it is now-" his voice trailed away. Helen was staring at the former eagle not unlike the way he used to stare at her – as if something (or someone) familiar had turned pseudonaturally alien.

"No," the anthropologist turned time-traveller was muttering, "no, no, no!"

"Helen! Snap out of it! It's only a bird!" Jenny was less patient than Nick for a good reason. "It's only a bird-"

The ex-eagle charged, the somewhat-reduced wings outspread to help balance the forwards-thrusting head and beak. Helen grabbed the other woman and jumped aside, but Stephen thrust his leg forward, and the odd bird tripped, falling off its feet and tumbling down a hill.

Helen gave Stephen a look. "That," she said slowly, "wasn't the wisest thing that you could have done."

"Why not?"

"That's why," Helen muttered, as the bird got back onto its' feet, shifting and changing once more – this time into a more humanoid shape. "The eagle's body has been partially converted into chronological energy, it seems, and it grows stronger, the rest of the original body mass is converted into it as well. The eagle is becoming another extradimensional creature, and that isn't something that I'm ready to handle."

"Not again!" Jenny groaned, as the memory of that misbegotten day spent partially in prehistoric Australia rose again. "Why couldn't it just be an eagle lost in a time different from its own?"

The thing that was once an eagle and once a different bird, emitted a cry that was part an eagle's screech, and part an extra-loud chicken squawk, and partially something else, almost like a human voice.

"Oh, screw this," Helen groaned, as the thing slowly stood up straight in a more humanoid stance and looked around. "I'm just a time traveller – not the oldest, or the smartest, or the strongest. There is no way I can handle something like that – I do not even know where to start."

"I do," Nick said slowly as he straightened up and walked forwards the strange being that now watched them with rather more intelligent eyes than before, waving forelimbs that were now something more than just wings. "Hello, there. Sorry that we got off a wrong foot and all, but look, if you agree to come with us, we'll help you to come to peace with yourself and have a better idea of what to do with your life and all. How that sounds?"

The thing made another sound and reached towards Nick with its' right forelimb. With some trepidation – the beak looked still very much bone-snapping and the fingers were clawed – Nick took the latter into his own hand, and then-

* * *

The bear looked very real and impressive; certainly the heat and stench of its' breath were a nicely realistic touch, as it stood up on its hind legs, dwarfing Becker for all of his own height, preparing to swat him down the way Becker would swat a fly.

A sudden growl off Becker's side, rather than before him, made the man look away from the approaching mega-beast; Michael, Caroline Steele's big (well, relatively big right now) Brazilian mastiff of a dog, had appeared at Becker's side, snarling its own threats. Becker remembered how Michael managed to take down a prehistoric sabre-tooth leopard and smiled – first, reassuringly, at Michael, then, mockingly, at the giant bear that now loomed before them. The beast just roared and swung its' paw, and then-

* * *

"Whatever happened to the nice time anomalies where you enter at one end and exit at another?" Jenny Lewis asked as suddenly they were back in the ARC. "'Cause this sort of time travel is not an improvement."

"My dear, we're altering and fixing entire time lines," Helen Cutter said calmly as she looked around the ARC with some of her trademark nonchalance returning. "Oh my, Melinoe has decided to visit us – again."

"Yes," Melinoe was half-scowling and half-smiling, "I saw and opening and – what has happened to you?"

"Therapy, I would say," Helen shrugged. "I was never the one to back down from a challenge, remember?"

"But- what have you done- you are a fool-"

Zap! An energy discharge similar to electricity lashed out at Melinoe, whose own eyes flashed with bright flame, and-

* * *

"What has happened?" Becker blinked. "Wasn't that shadowless woman here moments ago?"

"Oh, I zapped her, and she went away – I think," Connor said slowly. "Did she go away?" he turned to Helen.

"Yes she did, but you were never able to zap her," Helen said flatly, "and by the way, has anyone seen someone unusual here?"

"You mean the bird-thing? Is it also from the future?" Abby said meekly.

"No, it's the eagle that Connor managed to zap directly," Nick said calmly. "It has changed a bit and evolved some, and it is staying with us at the ARC now until we figure out what to do with it – or rather, until it – we're not sure what gender it has - does."

There was a crash from upstairs as the others looked and saw James Lester stare down at the ARC's field crew and its' newcomer before sitting promptly down on his arse, looking as if his self-control was about to snap.

"There, there," Jenny Lewis said in a vocal tone that was partly kindly and partly wryly. "It's just been one of those days, thanks to Connor Temple out here."

And it was when James Lester Esq. had lost his temper after all.

_To be continued..._


End file.
